Studio Visit: Painting and Dancing in Raychael Stine's Albuquerque Studio

It’s been ten years since painter Raychael Stine and I had studios next to each other in Chicago. I met Raychael in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where we were both pursuing an MFA in visual arts. Our studios were both off of the large drawing classroom on the fourth floor, plain unassuming doors that led beyond to artistic chaos and big city views. We stayed in touch, and now both live in New Mexico where Raychael is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

I visited Raychael at her painting studio on UNM’s campus and later her home, back in February, and she showed me what she was working on. Our conversation took place before the pandemic hit in March, so her studio has shifted a bit as she is now working from home. I loved getting the chance to visit her studio. It’s been wonderful to see her paintings evolve. Find Raychael online at www.raychaelstine.com and instagram @rayrayandbertie, and read on for our conversation about Raychael’s paintings and practice.

Raychael’s studio

Becca Grady: Can you introduce yourself and your work?

Raychael Stine: I’m a painter and I mostly paint extremely colorful abstractions that take a variety of languages of paint and kind of shove them together. There are some stylistic approaches that would suggest the light underneath something or perhaps the shadow behind another painting. So, there are some trompe l’oeil aspects but then there’s also a lot of expanded and exploded gradients that turn into little nugget chunks, and they kind of all come together and make a dog or some kind of physical culmination of a sort of secret dog. You don’t see the dog right away, they kind of come together later to show the dog. But there’s a variety of painting that I do. And then I have a big wide language around those words that I use. Like jammers and yows, and vision paintings. Jammers and yows are kind of spirit dogs but really, they’re just paint shoving up against other paint. So, jammers is like jamming of different kinds of space and material and pictorial information together and then a yow is sort of a traditional word for a spirit dog, like the Hound of the Baskervilles or like Black Shuck or any of these kind of apparitions that people talk about out on the moors.

BG: Got it. What is Black Shuck?

RS: Black Shuck is a story from Yorkshire, about a specific dog spirit out on the moors around a certain town. If you see Black Shuck at night, he’s got glowing red eyes and he’ll drag you to hell. But I am interested in these spirit hounds because there is also one story about a hound, a woman and two dogs called the Night Mallt or Matilda of the Night. Some people in the town think that the Night Mallt is this screaming terrible witch banshee with two black dogs with glowing red eyes. If you see her out, you’re going to die, and she’s going to take you to hell. But then other people in the same town or right around there think that the Night Mallt or Matilda of the Night is actually this benevolent spirit goddess guide who has two giant white dogs who will get you home safely.

BG: Oh wow. I love that.

RS: So, I love this kind of weird good/bad/in between about these imaginary creatures or not imaginary creatures out on the moors. But for me they’re more. They’re not direct dog portraits. They’re kind of about dog energy which for me is a thing that is talks about the immediacy of life and being present to life and about joy and love and the interconnectedness of beings.

BG: One of the reasons I was so excited to see your studio now was because it’s been almost ten years since we had studio spaces next to each other in graduate school. I feel like both of our work has changed so much in the last ten years. It’s really interesting to see the paintings that you’re doing now because they are so similar and so different from what you were working on in school. I feel like you just starting using the color gradients at the end of grad school. They were very small pieces in the paintings, and the dogs were very carefully rendered, similar to how the flowers are in the newer work. I was wondering if you could talk about this. I mean you don’t have to cover ten years. What’s the biggest shift in how you think about painting since we were in grad school together ten years ago? Or at least in the last several years?

RS: I think of painting, at least my practice, as a self-eating snake. And that really came in to play in graduate school. Before graduate school I would paint very naturalistic dogs and weasels and rats who were prancing through an imaginary landscape. Then suddenly blobby goopy corporealized paint would come in, and they were having this battle and adventures in some way, and this corporeal paint would come and take over and basically render them helpless. Like they would have their story going on but then this paint would come in and just fuck them all up. So, I decided when I went to grad school that I wanted to make the kind of paintings that I was told that I should never do because they were not interesting or worth things in the contemporary world. I decided to paint really straightforward dog portraits and still lives but they were also about pictures. I also have always been interested in the paint being a thing too. There’s never a time that I’m not painting when the paint is also stuff and not just a vehicle to display a window into a scene. When I started doing very naturalistic painting which I had never really necessarily done. I was using the photograph really intensely.

BG: In that you were painting from photographs?

RS: Yes, in painting from photographs. And I became really interested in the photograph as a thing also. And the painting as a thing. I started hanging paintings on the wall, or drawings on the wall, and painting trompe l’oeil paintings of paintings. So, the last thing I did in grad school was basically a big trompe l’oeil painting of one of my very loose messy underpaintings of a dog on the wall. And that came about because I was so interested in the light and shadow happening underneath that piece of paper that the underpainting was on. So fast forward a huge amount. After grad school I started a group of paintings called vision paintings. These took the gradient of a shadow behind or next to or some kind of light reaction and turned it into a lensic kind of aural. Then I collected palettes that were used to paint other things and put them on top like a platter. So, it was this painting that collected all the materials from making other observational paintings. Then the little nuggets of paints became entire palettes that would have painted another naturalistic dog or something but then the nugget just became the entirety of a realistic dog without actually painting the dog because the color is from mixing its body. Those paintings became about looking at paint and light and time and shoving them together on a platter of extreme visual space, shifting so the background is always blurred and then the stuff floats in front and there is a hovering in between space inside those vision paintings.

Then I took that which originally came from working on things naturalistically and started looking at weird light phenomena and rather than painting works that looked like paintings tromp l’oeil floating on the wall I started to try to describe space behind paint in a different unknown way. I started looking at like when you turn off a screen, sometimes there is a glow left on the screen. But there is a logic to painting a shadow underneath something. There’s a logic to the way the light shifts like in the saturation of color in a shadow. So just the understanding of the shift between the saturation and tone shifting of complements in a shadow. Basically, I used that over and over and just switched the colors and what used to be a nugget would flatten out. What used to be a nugget of a palette mix would suddenly flatten out and become a light shift or gradient shift so that the thing also became the space around the thing and would constantly jam or switch.

BG: Which is where the jammers came out of?

RS: Yes. But you also need to know that in grad school, Jesse McLean nicknamed my dog Hal “the jammer”.

BG: Oh, okay. I never heard that before. Ha-ha.

RS: Hal was little jammer. So, at the same time the jamming is the jamming of paint space and what happens when you shove, if that’s the right word. But I like the shoving and then something magical squeezes out. The borders now are often like this magical squeeze. And then they come in and out from the picture on it, which I do still call it a picture on the inside.

Raychael Stine at home with Bertie and Hal “the Jammer”.

BG: I noticed that there is a lot more movement in the center of your recent paintings, more than there was in older ones.

RS: Yes, in the centers. The border stops everything and pins it and allows for this energy to kind of go around it and then the work on the inside is super active and loose, so that’s always really loose acrylic work and then I put the borders on after I work that center really quickly. Most of the paintings are very fast suggestions of dogs that I have very quickly worked on top of other post cards or which have made their way into my work as hats on little paintings on little vision paintings. They are like nods to other works or other temporal things in the studio or other artists. I just started kind of pulling dogs out of all these postcards and then that led to doing really big loose paintings which really don’t look like dogs until you sit with all of them and a dog sort of slightly barely appears very cryptic. Sometimes the color palettes come from other paintings or they come from other photographs or they come from looking at the shadow underneath something and like inverting it. There’s a lot of flipping stuff around and turning things inside out.

BG: What are you working now? For instance, can you tell me about the paintings that are up in the studio now? 

RS: The painting that are up in the studio now are affected by living in New Mexico for sure. I moved here in 2013 to take my position at the University of New Mexico as an assistant professor of painting and now I’m an associate professor. I always used to paint things in portrait format, and I've shifted them. Suddenly I started doing work in landscape format, not related to still life. I started going out and working plein air because it’s such a weird thing. Like who does that? But if you move to New Mexico you do that!

BG: I know, so many people do that here!

RS: I was teaching, and I thought how fun would it be to reinstate this class called Wilderness Studio which was one of the first outdoor studio classes ever created at a university. This class had kind of gone by the wayside. But it was the very first one. It led to land arts of the American West and all these really important arts and ecology programs. This original Wilderness Studio was literally just can we go outside, and can we paint or make anything outside?

Basically, no you cannot. You kind of can but it’s a lesson in failure and adventure and you know we don’t think that a plein air landscape painting has anything necessarily interesting about it now. Especially when you are a studio painter and you’re just so detached from that kind of anachronistic observational work. But actually going out and doing it just I mean it just I do a lot of observational color mixing. The landscape in New Mexico has all these lovely crazy pastels and pinks. I live in Albuquerque, in the Sandia Mountains. They are called the Sandia Mountains, Watermelon Mountains, because when the sun sets, they turn this crazy amazing pink. I get to see that every day. It definitely changes the way that you paint. It’s why all these artists and painters have come to New Mexico for hundreds of years. 

BG: I love that about the mountains! I never made the watermelon connection though. 

RS: Yeah Sandia. So, my paintings turned into landscape position. I was working typically with dog portraiture. There is something about a dog portrait that is so wrong to do. You’re not supposed to do it, you’re not allowed to do it. Which is why I like to do it. And now that these paintings are so abstract, they’re still dog portraits so there’s still like this little illegal thing but now I’ve shifted them and turned them on their side so that the dogs are laying down. I started thinking of them as like Ophelia paintings, similar to the Millet work Ophelia. But these are not about a woman killing herself because her boyfriend has left, I don’t remember is that what happened? I was interested in that painting because there are these little floating flowers in the water and there is the light in the water where the water is so transparent and it’s just touching her and her hair is flowing and he put this really weird arc frame over the top of it. So, there is like a blue flower and a red flower that just look like they are floating on top of this painting and then this arc thing.

BG: The arc is the one thing I do not remember about the painting. I’m going to have to go back and look at it. I remember the glow and the flowers in the water and the hair.

RS: It’s just a golden thing. It’s crazy you don’t notice it because it’s a frame, so you’re not supposed to. I like to think of paint like a veil because it is stuff in front of and on the surface of something.

BG: Oh, I like that. 

RS: So always in my work there is the light coming over and there is veil in front and there is all this flipping of space on and in and on and in.

BG: And sometimes there is the shadow.

RS: Yes, the shadow. So, I thought that weird arc thing over her was amazing and then I was thinking that it is a veil and the water is like a veil and her hair.

Also, I love to garden. Since moving to New Mexico, I garden like crazy. I started making some paintings that were at least talking about my gardens based on the color selection I was making so I started some Ophelia paintings where I shoved the dog on its side and put it inside of a box like a garden bed and then I made my color choices based on certain flowers and things that I had in my garden. Like one of them is called “Ophelia One with Cosmos and Peas”, like cosmos the flower and also cosmos and peas. And the other is called “Ophelia Two Roses with Lettuce”, so it has a vegetable theme.

BG: Yes, that is so great.

RS: Then there are the borders. Instead of it just being a suggestion of light or floating have shifted and bent into sky and ground or sky and river or sky and pond so that has but so then the dog on the inside there is still a framed inside so it’s like pulls inverted in multiple perspectives at the same time and flat so it’s like a garden bed and a bed and a frame inside of a frame and like blobs of paint.

BG: And tears, and the petals!

RS: Yes, and so, what evolved from that, because since I’m always playing with things becoming other things becoming the same thing again like the self-eating snake, the dog ear has turned into a daisy petal so through my paintings for years and years I've used the daisy as a floral reference to pushing up daisies or another cliché kind of little flower that no one gives a shit about like a little daisy. My very first little painting of daisies I ever did I buried with my dog Pickle when she died, in a sweet honoring way. I’m not macabre but she was buried with that painting. I think of daisies as really important in terms of like a daisy as like a smiling innocent flower, but it’s also like pushing up daisies like the dead and it’s cheesy and it turns into a cartoon so but a daisy petal is also the shape of a tear and also the shape of a dog’s ear and sometimes a paw is the same shape as a really dumbed down daisy flower. All these pictorial symbols or approaches kind of mold and flip into each other in all these ways. That is how the garden bed is also the dog or the tears become these little naturalistic trompe l’oeil things added to the painting, water droplets/tears. You can’t see them until you get up close but they’re also talking about in and on at the same time because thematically whatever it is works with what’s going on even if it’s just materially right working with wet paint like with the materials I use. Like I use a very dry brushed through oil paint but then I use very wet sloshy acrylic, so when I put and there are also droplets of paint that just behave in this spattering drippy way so like doing some trompe l’oeil work that also suggests that but as water and putting those together I don’t know I just like that.

But yeah, the tears. And they become a sprinkler so the one I’m working on right now there are tears coming out and there are these two big daisies, but the tears are like this sprinkler rain craziness.

BG: Which goes back to the garden also. I have a vague memory of this, did you work as a florist for a while?

RS: I did actually, for thirteen years.

BG: Another flower connection.

RS: It is. It was very important to me to go to the things that I loved and knew. And also, the things that I thought were like I was saying illegal to do in art making especially as a woman. You don’t paint dogs and you don’t paint flowers if you want to be taken seriously. And then I realized that actually a lot of that was my own judgement or what I was trained to believe as a student and I never accepted.

BG: Well you got so much pushback about that in grad school.

RS: I did. But I did it on purpose.

BG: Well ok, but everyone went for it. You had to defend yourself at every single critique. And you did such a good job at every single one. I was so impressed with you and how you handled the critiques.

RS: Thank you. That was my goal. That is why I went to school and did what I did. I needed to be convinced myself about what I was doing. And about the strength of what I wanted to do which was paint my dogs, paint these things that were important in terms of meaning, also paint paintings and have a love of the history and the craft and just fuck with everything, fuck with it a lot.

BG: I love that

RS: It’s almost like cutting up what you’re doing and putting it in the blender and taking a picture of it being blended or like I've done this and now putting it back together I’ve folded it this way and I’m pulling it back together. so now the colors are like insane.

BG: The colors are so awesome. Your studio is amazing. The colors are so good.

RS: There’s definitely thematic colors in my life. Sometimes I’m in the studio and it’s so intensely bright and for a minute I’m like I hate this but then I have to trust what’s coming out. Like ok you just made this big daisy, but it looks like a cut-out paper flower on the front of this painting now it’s like huge but also it looks like a Mickey Mouse hand in some way. Or like what the hell is that. So, you know I just kind of go with what comes out. And the crazy colors are what's coming out.

BG: Yeah. I love it. Do you have any routines that you like to do in the studio? Do you listen to music?

RS: I dance in the studio. I dance in the studio more than I paint. And I have to have a playlist, I have to have my songs for that period of time. There’s a lot of pop music. There are all kinds, I’m a musicphile. I work a variety of ways so sometimes I’m very still  and I’m painting very slowly and small and I need to get up and move around and then but when I’m doing the parts like the backgrounds that are really washy with all the movement you were talking about that literally like I lay my work down on the ground after I stretch it and I work above it. So, paintings are the ground, they’re on the wall, they’re big. So yeah, I dance in the studio. I have the same studio outfit that I’ve had for ten years. Same thing as if I go work out. I can’t work out unless I have the right outfit. same thing in the studio. I have to wear my painting dress and my apron. The apron was given to me by a friend whose Greek grandmother made it. I’ve had it forever. I used it in the floral industry too as my floral apron.

BG: What are you dancing to this week?

RS: This week I was dancing to Carly Rae Jepson.

BG: Excellent choice.

RS: I was also listening to Betty Who and dancing and I have been particularly interested in Caroline Polichek's "you’re so hot you hurt my feelings" that album Pang is so good. she’s the singer from Chairlift. It’s so good, it’s super good indie pop.

BG: Oh, I don’t know her. I’ll have to listen to her.

RS: And then I was listening to Banks “Look what you’re doing to me”. It’s so good too. I like to move in there. My studio is filled with joy. Everything about it is ecstatic. It’s fun, its love filled. It’s like a giddy kind of place.

BG: You feel that walking in. I felt that walking in. The color and the movement in paintings, and you’ve got all that extra light in there. It’s excellent 

RS: Thanks. I love my light in my studio. It took a while, but I was able to do that.

BG: I also wanted to ask you about teaching. Do you have any advice that you give to your younger students, like when they are stuck or advice for working through creative blocks?

RS: For undergrads or grads, I think my go to pieces of advice that I think are very important because they are very important to me is to start perhaps by giving yourself a problem to solve. Or making a problem for yourself to solve. So instead of starting with a super blank canvas and trying to make something perfect. that’s going to be you making something you’ve already seen that you already know. you’re not solving a problem you’re trying to recreate something that your brain already knows which is never going to be very good. But if you start with something, like a mess, like pick three colors, throw them on the canvas, then you have something to work with you have something to fix. so, make it work, put a mess, and make it work somehow.

BG: I’ve heard similar advice about giving yourself some perimeters and rules. Like come up with three rules or something for whatever your project is, and then you can break them, but you get this sort of concentrated thing that you’re trying to work out in a tinier space.

RS: Same thing. You solve way more problems when you have very limited perimeters. Or you come up with something creative and interesting. Another I guess would be that do not imagine that your work is somehow separate from you. and also, you don’t have to put all of your political leanings or like social thoughts or philosophical beliefs into your work. Like I don’t need you to teach me a lesson when you make something. I don’t want to pretend we’re playing a science game. I’m not going to be the person who’s encouraging. That’s not my way of approaching work. For me it’s like how do you mine your life? And it doesn’t have to be you have there’s so much information in the material in the approach and in the process that you have to trust that your audience is smarter than you think. Because if you say it’s gotta be one thing than you have just killed the thing that anyone would like be surprised by in it. so, the goal is like to do it with the least amount of information possible whether or not that’s material or marking or whatever I don’t know what it is. Find the broadest way that someone can enter and then make them stay.

BG: I like that.

Raychael in her Albuquerque garden

RS: The balance of that is very difficult. The thing that keeps me out but also makes art dead on arrival is telling me what I’m supposed to see or believe or know about it. What is most exciting and generative is the thing that surprises you. And it might be that you come to it thinking you know it but the good in it is that you just don’t. You realize that you don’t and that’s when you say I don’t know. 

BG: When the magic happens? 

RS: Yes, that’s when the magic happens! And it can be in just a painting. That can happen in a painting. You don’t have to have bells and whistles and installations and videos and whatever. You can do that too, but you can do it in just a painting. 

BG: Where can folks find your work? Do you have any exhibitions coming up?

RS: My website is www.raychaelstine.com and Instagram is @rayrayandbertie . I had a two person show back in September and there is talk of doing something else in the next year. But nothing is really solidified yet. But I have somethings in the works.

Thanks so much Raychael!

More Studio Visit posts. All photography by me, Becca Grady. 

Studio Visit: Painting on the Coast of Maine with Elizabeth Kelley Erickson

Elizabeth Kelley Erickson is a painter based in Maine. We’ve been friends for over twenty years. It’s been ages since we’ve done a studio visit, so on my last two visits home to Maine, in September and again in January, we made the time to sit down in her studio and chat about the work she’s been making lately. We talked about her inspiration, her recent move to California and back home to Maine, as well as her upcoming show at Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine that opens on Saturday, March 7th.

Becca Grady: Can you start off by talking a little bit about your work and what you do? 

Elizabeth Kelley Erickson: Through painting, drawing, art + yoga, and archeology, I’m exploring nature, relationships, culture, and consciousness. I’m following three seemingly separate internal calls: painting, art that comes up out of yoga and meditation, and archeological art. All three areas have come on really strong in my life and I’m searching for the intersection, to see how they might take form in a way that makes sense. All of them are connected to place and to making work that comes out of an experience. All the work is about nature: nature as in the natural and human worlds, and the spiritual nature of things. Meanwhile, archeology has me delving into both my imagination and science about this magic little archipelago of islands in Cape Porpoise, Maine. I have always felt that it is my soul’s home. There is such a draw for me to experience this place. It is constantly changing. It’s a real living relationship I have with this land. I just want to be out there: exploring every tidepool, knoll, nook, the mudflats, and all the geological flows and features. There is a lot of evidence of humans in the junque that is washed up, and with how our human activities affect intertidal life. I want to know all the stories, including the histories and layers of human occupation, while also acknowledging the sense of impermanence with regards to the future and climate change.

BG: You've been painting and drawing for a long time now. Can you talk a bit about how you got started? 

EKE: Well, I must have let enough of my desire to work as an artist be seen and there were a few key people in my life who caught that. They mirrored it back to me, offering encouragement and support. My friend Jeannie, who just passed away, had me start with scribble drawings. This entailed putting on some music, waving the pastel in the air (charcoal, brush, anything) as if you were conducting the music, and letting it flow onto the page. It took a combination of internal drive and external support to break through fear and actually get things moving. I took classes, went to figure drawing groups, and started painting out in the landscape. I began running with a group of artists and we would plan painting trips and call it “Art Camp”. There was a lot of talent in that group and they were all so generous, I learned from everyone. We showed work together and a lot of us are still dear friends. That crew and my teachers and early encouragers effectively performed an act of midwifery that brought my work into the world. It is so important to encourage one another. I take the opportunity to encourage other artists whenever I can. 

BG: So, you were my introduction to figure drawing. I still remember all those nights going to the figure drawing group with you way back when. Is the group still around and do you still go? How do figures show up in your work today? Has that changed, evolved over the years? 

EKE: Oh, wow Becca, I remember meeting you as a teenager. You had an uncanny wisdom and were already an independent thinking artist. Yes! The groups are still happening, I go when it fits with my overall workflow. It is always helpful to work the drawing chops and I love re-connecting with my home-team of artists. A couple years ago I was inspired by my interest in working with shapes to take a workshop with Ken Kewley. He is a master teacher and has a great way of working small compositions with hand-painted paper. After that workshop I started working directly from the figure with collage. It is a great way to explore the integration of figure in space as well as to work with observational abstraction which has been a long term pull for me. 

There are other long held figure ideas gestating but it remains a mystery as to when they will take form, but they have to do with letting the charcoal fly on a large scale and relate to the collages in terms of straight-line construction. Figures come up through the art & yoga too. These are coming from memory, sense impressions, the subconscious. Usually they are gestural or little figural blobs and flying or dancing or doing things in the landscape.

BG: You lived in California for a while, and then came back to Maine. Did living in California shift any perspectives in your work? Immediately I think about the difference in light between the two coasts. Is that something that you notice or think about? Has your work changed being back in Maine?

EKE: Yes, I definitely tapped into the brights out west, it is really funny to look through all my older “gray” paintings of New England landscapes compared to what came out after I started painting vegetation and botanical forms out in California. I also got really into yoga. I literally went out to buy fluorescent paint because it seemed like the vibration of the plants was so high. It was so LA, I’d have a morning green drink, go to a phenomenal yoga class, and get to work painting next to a massive cut leaf philodendron. I found out that philodendron translates to ‘Love-Tree’ so that became the name of that series.

I moved to California right after finishing my MFA in painting. Being out of school and in a totally new place there was a freedom to explore and reconnect with what and how I wanted to paint. I ended up squelching my expression during the MFA experience so I could do what I needed to do for the program. Once I got to California, I experimented more. The internal and external light and energy affected me, my paintings got bigger, more expressive, and the color came back. That energy and language is part of me, and it is coming out in the work I’m making now that I’m back in Maine. The thing about California was that the influences out there tapped into a part of me that had been dormant: the light, the joy, the energy, the friends I made, teaching art, teaching Kundalini Yoga, the huge creativity. It was so fun. I do miss LA, my friends, all the art, artists, yogis and definitely although I also love wintertime in Maine, the weather. I’m glad to be back in Maine though, to get grounded, to settle into my studio, and let the work integrate. 

BG: You've been working on a series of paintings of rocks. Can you tell me about them, and how you're thinking about them now? I'm especially interested in hearing about these three large, colorful ones that you've just finished. I love these paintings - they are so strong and vibrant, not quite of the ocean but absolutely of the ocean. It's almost like what you would see if you were at the water's edge on a really sunny day and you stared at the sun for too long and then closed your eyes, and in your mind’s eye you saw the same scene but abstracted into vibrant colors. These began as smaller studies that you painted on the island in Stage Harbor, and then made them larger, correct? Does anything change or shift with them once they become larger? How do you approach the color in these? 

EKE: Thanks Becca! I love your afterimage impression. I’m so glad you got the sense of sitting next to the ocean. This is really what they are about, that experience of sitting amongst the seaweed covered rocks. The intertidal zone is totally my muse right now. There is so much life and magic and metaphor in this place between the low and high tide marks. I’m working something out on a deep level here. It feels like the key reason I had to come back to Maine. This flow of paintings started back in the summer of 2017, with the small paintings done out on the islands. I had been working out there with big shape breakdown, with observational abstraction. The application was brushy and gestural. Then my painting buddy Janet Ledoux and I took a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. I saw a little Arthur Dove painting of the night sky. I was struck by the simplified and contained shapes and the mystery of Dove. The next day when I went out to the island, I was painting on the far side of the island and I had the most amazing sensation: my body was tingling and I truly felt this one-ness, an order, a rightness of everything with everything. I was painting away feeling grateful and amazed at it all. I was capturing shapes of the light on the seaweed, the rocks, the surface of the water, and small breaking waves. They were all coming out more contained like the Dove painting, but it was less representational. My alarm started going off and I could hear the faint chimes, but I just kept painting. I was half-sitting on a rock with my leg extended in a tidal gully, and I could feel the tide rising up my leg! I had to get back, so I did not get caught in the tide, but I just kept painting. Then a little mink popped up on a rock about 5 feet away, went behind a rock and dropped into a pool nearby and disappeared. What a gift, I was given this non-dual experience, totally one, totally happy. I packed up really quick and felt like I danced across the rocks to get back. I had to go through the mud, wading home while holding my kit and the painting up out of the water. I did a couple more paintings over the next few days like that, and then the following week, I headed back to LA and started working on the larger versions of these paintings in the studio. It was as much about savoring the raw beauty of those days in the intertidal as it was about building images in the studio. I kept the colors pretty consistent, they are bright, but it was important to get the deep color sensation of being amongst the seaweed rocks. Shortly after that, we moved back to Maine. After getting my studio space set up, I brought the paintings back out of storage. I just finished and delivered them to Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine for a show. These paintings are part of a larger series called Rocks and Sea that I’m still working on, out on the islands and in the studio. 

BG: You also have a series of more meditative paintings, the circle drawings. How do you make these? They look so good altogether, seeing the differences in patterns. 

EKE: Thanks for that, they are really experience paintings. It is phenomenal where art can take you, what it can show you about yourself if you let it. That series comes directly out of my yoga and meditation practice. I have the materials set up and move right into making after a yoga set and meditation without breaking the energy. So, the art comes right out of the meditative current. There are a lot of surprises with what comes out onto the page, it can get pretty personal. I’ve been using this method to connect more intuitively with nature too, working outside and feeling for the pulse of the setting I’m in, whether it be the garden or the intertidal zone. It’s a way to listen to the earth, which is so important to our collective vision. It feels like magic when the imagery of the ancients flows out of the brush, and how what I’m learning through archeology rises up. I have to thank my teacher and mentor Hari Kirin for guiding me to a new level of depth with my art & yoga practice. She is a fantastic painter, yogi, teacher, healer who wrote the book “Art & Yoga”.

BG: When you describe what you do you mention Art + Yoga almost as a different category – is it? Do you think of it as separate from the rest of your art making, or as a practice that informs the rest of your work?

EKE: Great question, it started as separate. I saw it as a way to clear the noise and tune myself in creatively, to explore the unknown. A place that was not to be seen by anyone else. My work from observation started to show up, like memories of subjects I had recently painted on location would meander onto the page in a gesture or shape. I started using meditations for visual perception and intuition with the intention of listening to and looking for what the land, the natural world wanted to communicate. Using art as attention to witness. The same spirit of curiosity, looking and listening runs through the archeology. Imagery inspired by archeological digs and the ideas we are gathering about how life was for the ancients started to flow after meditating. So, I am finding all the strands weaving together, informing each other.

BG: You mentioned that you've been working with an archeological project in Cape Porpoise and that you're learning technical drawing as part of this. Can you tell me a bit more about that? How is the technical drawing different? How does one learn how to do that? I imagine it comes easy to you after years of drawing, but the drawings look so perfect. 

EKE: Yes! This is another phenomenal thing that happened. The natural magic of life amazes me. The islands that I paint on are part of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. The trust land borders my family property. All my life being in this place I’ve wondered about who lived here before, what was the cultural and geological history. So, I was out there painting last summer and ran into the lead archeologist and was invited to volunteer 3 days later at the excavation of 700-year-old dugout canoe from the mudflats in front of my family cottage. Crazy, right? We had been walking over this thing for generations! Everything clicked and I have been working with CPAA (Cape Porpoise Archeological Alliance) ever since. Having accurate technical drawings in addition to photos is an important part of the archeological record. The team showed me basic drawing conventions and I worked up a scale drawing using rulers and grids. It’s a lot of looking and measuring, once you get a basic schematic you get into a rhythm. The thing is, this canoe is very complex. It is deteriorated, cracked into pieces full of worm holes. So CPAA set up a workshop with Sue Osgood, an expert epigraphic recorder who has been documenting the temple and tombs of Egypt, to work with us to innovate a method for drawing the canoe. This project is in the works. The team has pointed me to conventions for drawing stone tools and artifacts which I’m working with now. I love the discipline of it and am grateful for the in-depth study of these artifacts and what they can tell us about who was here before us. 

BG: What is a typical day in the studio for you? Do you have any routines? Do you have favorite tools or music that you listen to? 

EKE: Celery juice, morning practice, yoga, meditation, writing. It is key for me to take care of myself and have a service component to my day, to tend to home, to relationships, and to get out in nature. A friend of mine said “The rocks you are painting love to have you witness them”, I feel this as an energy exchange. So, I’m always intent on clearing things that block my spiritual sense and developing my ability to witness. I listen to a lot of mantra, beats, rhythms, and even medieval music like Hildegard of Bingen. I have a playlist for my Rocks & Sea series, the other day I could not get enough of whale sounds. Some of my music reaches into the ancientness of the rocks and the fluidity of the water. Sound carries a healing vibration, so I’m immersing myself in a vibrational soundtrack of the intertidal. My secret hope is that there is a healing going on with the “gazing”, the attentional and imaginative immersion in the intertidal. It feels like a love affair. When I give myself over to it, I feel the reciprocity and sense of wonder. As for a routine, my perfect workday is art and yoga in the early morning, studio painting after that, a great walk in the afternoon with some archeological drawing, and study before dinner. When I’m working outside, I plan around the weather, the light and the tide cycle. If the light is right at high tide, I take a kayak, if it’s low tide I’ll need my big old boots. I am out there a few days a week, sometimes walking, sketching or taking photos and then going back to the studio to paint. 

BG: Are there other creatives, painters, writers, thinkers, that you look to for inspiration? 

EKE: I have always loved painters like Joan Mitchell, Richard Diebenkorn, Willem de Kooning, Manuel Neri, Elizabeth Cummings, and Cecily Brown, for their gesture, muscle, and surface. I look at many of the Perceptual Painters of the Hawthorne lineage for their value and shape flow, paint application, and soul. I also love drawing. I’m thinking of Jenny Saville’s big drawing of 2 reclining figures that I saw recently at the Broad, and some of Ginny Grayson’s head studies, and of Jacopo Pontormo’s work. Hilma af Klint really got me and I like looking at strange medieval painting, Outsider Art, and dreamy work like Kyle Staver. I’m inspired by Mark Bradford’s epic work and I follow a lot of contemporary painters like Terry Ekasala, Galen Cheney, Jennifer Pochinsky, and Daniel Crews Chubb. 

BG: Do you have any shows coming up? Where can folks find your work? 

EKE: The best place to see what’s happening is on Instagram: @elizabethkelleyerickson and my yoga art feed @heartseyeart. Right now I have a solo show of yoga art at Positive Works Studio in Amesbury, Massachusetts (by appointment only, email me at capeporpoiseme@hotmail.com), I have 3 small collages in the Nano: A Tiny Art Exhibition at Engine in Biddeford, Maine through March 22, 2020, and I’m excited that the beginning of my Rocks & Sea series is up at Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine opening March 7, 2020. 

Thanks so much Elizabeth! If you’re interested in seeing what the intertidal zone in Cape Porpoise looks like, you can see it at sunrise in September here, and find more Studio Visit posts.

All photography by me, Becca Grady.

Studio Visit: Flowers and Art with Abigail McNamara of Bagel's Florals

Abigail (Bagel for short) McNamara is an artist and florist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I found her through her flower work on instagram, and was excited to see some of the artwork on her website. In addition to making beautiful floral arrangements that she sells through her bouquet subscription service Bagel’s Florals, she also draws, paints, and makes installation work. McNamara grew up in Montana and was raised by two gardeners. Knowing this, I wasn’t surprised to learn that during the summer months she also grows some of the flowers she uses in her arrangements in her garden, in addition to sourcing locally (like Mini Falls Farm) whenever possible. We connected at the end of January for a photo session and studio visit in her Albuquerque studio, where she showed me how she creates her amazing floral arrangements. We talked about running small creative businesses and the challenges of carving out free creative time.

Becca Grady: Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

Abigail McNamara: My name is Abigail, or Bagel for short. I am primarily an artist and craftsperson. That just bleeds into everything I do, whether it’s working with flowers, or playing with paint or string, or playing in the garden. Everything that I do is very process oriented and I like doing things with my hands. So, I would say I’m an artist most generally and then there are a lot of specific things that I do, but they are all kind of working towards the same end. They all chill me out and they’re all centered around seeing beauty and nature and processes.

BG: How did you get started working with flowers?

AM: Looking back, it’s much easier for me to see how I ended up with flowers. I went to college for art. I was trying to make art to make money, while also having a day job, and my day jobs took me all over the place. I started out vegetable farming. I worked for a couple of small businesses. While I was working for this bakery, I heard about an opportunity to play with flowers: during the Valentine’s Day rush at this really big florist in San Francisco. So, I worked the Valentine’s rush, which meant showing up to work at 2 am, working till 7 in the morning, and then going home. It was the weirdest schedule, but I was instantly enamored with being around so many flowers. Then, one of my co-workers at the bakery told me about an apprenticeship at a small urban farm in San Francisco that grew flowers. And so, I became an apprentice there and I would go once a week and harvest flowers and learn about growing techniques and we would also design bouquets for market. And so, looking back, I feel like it happened very organically, like flowers found me. they really are a nice place between my interest in plants and processes, and my interest in art. After I moved to Albuquerque, I interned for an event florist called Floriography. I was getting to be around flowers a lot but was starting to want to express my creative voice with them. And so, I started Bagel’s Florals as a subscription program. Really, I created it just to give myself an opportunity to play with flowers every week and to go with the seasons and to find my creative process with flowers, but soon I found myself running a business.

BG: When did you start Bagel’s Florals?

AM: It was sometime in the summer of 2017. I don’t know exactly when it started. There was the time when I had the domain name, but I didn’t even have a business. It just very slowly happened. I never intended it to be my sole income or a business. I didn’t write a mission statement. I just scrapped it together and then was like ‘I guess I’m making money from this now’.

BG: And so, it’s grown into being your business. That’s awesome.

AM: It is. It has served me really well and I feel like the community here in Albuquerque has been really supportive of it and excited by what I’ve been doing with flowers. It’s just been a really good environment for it to grow. So, I’ve just let it grow.

BG: Do you have a favorite flower? Or multiple favorite flowers?

AM: That’s like the hardest question ever.

BG: It can be a list.

AM: I feel like it changes with the seasons and also when I meet something new or start using something often. I would say poppies are one of my favorites, although they are really hard to work with in design because they have a very short vase life. But that’s part of what makes them so special, that ethereal quality. Also, sweet peas, which my mom always grew when I was growing up. She always used “sweet pea” as a pet name for us, so I just love sweet peas. And they smell so amazing.

BG: I love that!

AM: I’ve been growing them for a couple of years now too. It’s hard not to list a million but those are two of my favorites. After those, I’d choose classics like roses and ranunculus.

BG: What was the ranunculus that you used in the bouquet you just made?

AM: That’s a Charlotte Ranunculus. And there’s also this variety called Butterfly Ranunculus that are really cool. I have this whole other category of favorite flowers which are the textures or the “fillers”. The ones that aren’t star flowers or what you would call in floral design “focal flowers”. They’re the weird textures that support the eye-catching ones. There’s this flowering acacia tree that has these little yellow puffballs. I love that stuff. I love textures. My weirdo flowers.

BG: Have you ever done any large floral installations? I was thinking about that when I was looking at some of your art installation work on your website.

AM: No, not yet. It is very similar in a lot of ways, especially the emotional process of making an installation. How you are trying to understand what something is going to be before you make it. It’s like you’re trying to remember a dream or something and you’re thinking of it in your head, but you can’t really identify it and yet you have to prepare to make it. There’s always that period of time when I get very stressed and worried that everything is going to fail. Then there is tons of work actually creating it, but you have to save that, well especially for florals, to complete all in one day. So, I feel like doing art installations has prepared me for doing floral installation.

BG: That’s so interesting. I know that we can have many different creative practices that are seperate and unrelated, but occasionally there can be some unexpected crossover and I’m always interested in where that happens.

AM: Yeah. I also never used color until I started working with flowers. All of my artwork before flowers was mostly white. I had started going into blues and monochromatic stuff. There was a lot of white and black and a little bit of brown, all neutrals. I didn’t think that color was something that I could do, and I didn’t feel comfortable with it, and once I started working with flowers, I started falling in love with color. There are colors that I never liked that I now love because of flowers. It’s cool to see how all the artwork I’ve been making since flowers is super colorful. So yeah, flowers definitely made me more playful with color. There’s a lot of overlap for sure.

BG: Could you talk a little bit about your art practice? Like where do you look for inspiration? You make art, a mix of works on paper, fiber, and installations. Between the works on paper and the more sculptural installations, they all seem to use drawing as a method. Drawing/painting on paper and drawing in space with linen thread and beeswax. Is that something that you think about?

AM: My degree was in drawing, but by the time I was doing my thesis, I was much more interested in sculpture and installation. But my work was still very informed by drawing, whether that was imagery, or line work, or light and shadow, or really focusing on form. I think that’s why I wasn’t doing a lot of color because I was so interested in texture. That’s how I got started and since then I’ve moved through lots of different media. I’m drawn to processes that are very repetitive and detail oriented where I can do one thing for hours and hours and hours and hours to make a larger piece. That’s taken me in all different directions.

BG: Did you find that how you make art changed when you got to New Mexico? For example, did the light or new shapes influence you?

AM: I feel like how I make art is always changing. It did change when I got to New Mexico. I think because of how I was spending my time and how I was directing my energy. I was getting into flowers at the time and was also really into baking, and I just wasn’t making as much art in my studio. I feel like since I got here, I have been wrestling with that a little bit, like whether or not I feel that I’m making enough. At this point, I’m just trying to take all that pressure off and to not be concerned with how much I’m producing, or to what end, and to just spend time doing it because I love it. I’ve been able to change in that way because, before I moved here, I was thinking that making money from my artwork was the end goal. Slowly I realized how much money I would have to charge for my art to make the money that I need to live. I realized that I didn’t know if that was ever going to happen for me and if it was, I would have to be a part of this echelon of the art world that I don’t really want to be a part of. it forced me to realize why I do art, which is primarily for fun. So that’s what I’m trying to do now.

BG: Do you think of these smaller pieces in the studio as potentially working together towards a larger work?

AM: Maybe. I feel like I’m in such a funny place right now, even to talk about my art, because since starting the business I’ve been struggling to find time for both. Because of that I’ve just let go of any kind of expectation of an end result like certain works leading up to a show, or a bigger version, or whatever. So, no I don’t really think of these works as necessarily becoming something bigger although they could if that’s where they take me. Right now, I’m just trying to take a backseat, in terms of controlling what anything is going to be, just letting myself and the work figure it out together.

BG: I had to do the same thing with my art and business. I also worked full time for a long time before I was able to just do the jewelry business. I kept thinking I was going to have slightly more time to balance the two, but the business sort of took up all of my free brain space. So, I had to put my art practice on the back burner.

AM: Yes, and it’s probably very similar for you, that your business is also a creative outlet. I get to be very creative with flowers and even in the garden. I’m tending to this thing and watching it become something more, it’s very analogous to my art practice. So, I think in some ways I don’t need the art as much, but I also want to get back to it so badly. I want to be an artist for my whole life, so I’m going to be doing that dance forever to a certain degree or another. I try not to get too hung up on how long it’s been or how little I’ve been in the studio, because in the larger scheme of things I’m going to be an artist for my whole life so it’s okay if I’m not having three shows a year or x, y, and z. As long as I just stay curious about that part of myself.

BG: Yeah, that’s actually how I started painting. Because I was like ‘I need to make art, but I don’t have a show planned’. I wasn’t going to plan some big installation when I didn’t have the space for it. So I decided I needed to make something that was certain size.. And then I can put it away and paint over it, or whatever. I would say to myself, ‘ok this is what I’m doing for the afternoon because that is the amount of time that I have’. It eventually turned into a large body of work. But to get started, I just had to say ok, I have this much time to play and that’s it.

AM: Yes, play. That’s such a good word because that is what it feels like to make art, and especially, to paint. There’s something about painting that feels extra playful. Maybe mixing the colors and like…

BG: Getting messy?

AM: Yeah, like taking yourself back to being a kid.

BG: Are there places that you look for inspiration? For art or for flowers?

AM: I love sitting in the window seat on an airplane. That’s one of the most inspirational places for me. A lot of my art reflects systems or patterns on micro and macro levels so when I get to physically zoom out and be up in the airplane, that’s one of my favorite things. I take a ton of pictures from the window seat. I don’t really like flying in general, but I really like getting that view of the world. And it’s both sides of that coin, getting that world view and then noticing really tiny details. So, a lot of times that’s in nature. I walk my dog every day and I’m very attuned to what’s growing in my neighborhood and what time of year it is and what the texture of the seed pod looks like. Maybe that sounds kind of cliché but it’s true. Nature is really the main place that I find inspiration and always has been.

BG: I was also wondering, since you run a small business, what have been the biggest challenges for you? And is there anything you would like to tell someone else who is starting a business or yourself two years ago?

AM: So many things. To someone starting a business or to myself two years ago I would say – pay yourself. Figure out a way to pay yourself from the beginning because it will make it a lot easier to continue paying yourself throughout the process. That’s something that I’m just figuring out how to do. And honestly, it wouldn’t hurt to do things “right” from the beginning.

BG: What does “right” mean? Like a business plan?

AM: I don’t think a business plan is 100% necessary. But I would recommend opening a business bank account at the beginning – not getting your business finances entangled with your personal finances. It’s just easier if you figure that out in the beginning. Then you are not putting yourself in a position where you are chugging along and trying to do the next important thing, but you have to stop and worry about all these licenses and records and undoing your mistakes. But I definitely didn’t want to hear that. And as much as I don’t think anyone really wants to hear that, it would have made things a little easier if I had started out doing everything by-the-book. As far as a mission statement and stuff goes, your vision can change and develop as you go. But it’s so valuable to go into it knowing some business basics, like knowing the rules so you can break them. I was a DIY kid, and I very much still believe in that philosophy, but sometimes if you just follow the rules it can make things easier.

And to your other question about biggest challenges, I guess it’s not that different from everyone’s life. It’s just like balancing the different roles that you have in your world and being mindful of how you’re using your energy. Which I think is true for someone who has an office job, or someone who works at a restaurant, or someone who is a business owner. that’s just kind of a constant thing in life. I don’t think that there is ever one right answer or one right way to do it. For me, personally, I think it’s always changing. So, it’s just about staying in touch with that and staying curious. Like ‘ok, what do I want to do more of, or what do I want to do less of?’ or ‘how does that affect my art practice or my business?’. So yeah, I think balancing everything is the hardest part of running a small business, but I think that may be true about anyone’s job.  

BG: Where can folks find your flowers? Do you have any pop ups coming up? 

AM: You can always order Bagel's Florals for delivery through the online shop: bagelsflorals.com. This week, for Valentine's Day, we'll be popping up all over Albuquerque – at And Stuff Collective on Thursday the 13th, and then on Friday (Valentine's Day) at Little Bear Coffee, Heidi's Jam Factory, and Paradise Club Vintage. At the moment, I don't sell anywhere locally besides via the online store. In the summer, I pop-up more frequently as there is a lot of locally grown product available to me, and I'm pretty easy to find during the holidays as well.

All photos by me, Becca Grady, 2020.

Studio Visit: the books and paintings of Jacinta Bunnell

Anne Elizabeth Moore connected me with Jacinta Bunnell earlier this year, and I’m so glad she did! She makes awesome feminist and queer coloring books for kids and adults of all ages. I truly wish that they had been around when I was a kid. Since this Summer, I’ve been helping her out with some website and social media projects and getting to know her work really well. Last month, she released a new coloring book in Spanish, and I wanted to share it here.

We recently did a long distance studio visit, (I’m in New Mexico and Jacinta is in Hudson Valley, New York). You can read my interview with Jacinta about her books and practice below. Included are some photos that I took of her coloring books, and some photos Jacinta sent me of her artwork and studio. You can find the rest of her work at jacintabunnell.com and all of her books at queerbookcommittee.com.

Rebecca Mir Grady: You mentioned that you have a residency this fall that's at a library or a collection of kids books?

Jacinta Bunnell: I will be in residency for a week at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. They have the largest collection of children’s books with LGBTQ content I have ever personally seen. I have a long professional relationship with Adrian Shanker, the Founder and Executive Director, who I met at a youth organizers conference in the early 2000s when he was a student activist. When the new girls will be boys will be girls will be… was released, he invited me to show the images from the book in the art gallery at the Center. While there for the opening, I was amazed by their vast children’s library and proposed a residency so I could study the books. The Center was able to secure funding and I am looking forward to teaching some workshops while there, spending my days reading children’s books, and working on my second kid’s book.

RMG: Can you tell me a bit about how you got started making art?

JB: I was always a crafty kid. My favorite thing to do was create new bubble letter fonts and make sings for my bedroom door with my name. My dad and my Aunt Bobbi were self-taught artists who nurtured a certain artistic side of me, but I didn't have any formal training or even consider that I could take an art class in high school. 

I took one drawing class in college because I tried to take a class with every known queer teacher at Bucknell, where I got a degree in Philosophy and religion. I spent a lot of time thinking about and working on social change while in college and knew that I wanted to do some sort of community organizing work when I graduated. Art was never on the table. 

When I graduated, I was a volunteer coordinator at a soup kitchen for a year and then got a job at Planned Parenthood, working as a health educator and case manager. While there in the 90s, I started an LGBTQ teen discussion group and one of the activities I led was making zines about our personal stories. In some ways, those zines were the predecessor to what I am doing now. 

Jacinta Bunnell’s collage art, courtesy of the artist.

RMG: Have you always made collage style paintings? Has there been an evolution in your style over the years? What are you working on right now?

JB: The first real painting I ever made was in the early 2000s and began as a collage that I painted an image over. I was living with my partner Michael, who is a trained visual artist and illustrator. I was intrigued by what he and so many artists living in the Hudson Valley were doing. I asked them for art lessons. Out of necessity after a head trauma, which left me with blinding headaches when I read or wrote for a year and a half, I began painting because it didn’t give me a headache, and gave me something to do so I didn’t go mad not being able to read and write. I discovered that I loved it. My first works were so simple, but everyone around me was so supportive. I had some shows at local cafes and I sold the work. I kept going because it gave me such peace to make art. It is one of the only times when the swirl of worries and to-do lists in my head stop. Currently, I just finished designing two album covers for children’s musicians and am hand-painting a pair of pants for one of them to wear on tour. Working for oneself can be so uncertain some days because you don’t always know where the next job is coming from, but it is such a fun adventure.

RMG: You also make books, coloring books. How long have you been making those? Some of them are collaborations, can you tell me about how you started making those?

JB: I have been creating coloring books since 2001. When I was a childcare provider and health educator, so much of the children’s media I came across was heteronormative and sexist, so I combined forces with another creative friend, Irit Reinheimer (also a childcare provider at the time) to write the first book, girls will be boys will be girls wll be.... We initially made it for our friends and community, but found that it had a wider appeal than we had originally envisioned. I loved the process of creating the first book so much, that I just kept going. I had the idea for the second one, Girls Are Not Chicks, but I didn’t have great graphic design skills, so I invited my friend Julie Novak to collaborate with me on that one. When I had the idea for the third book, Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon, I had the whole concept laid out and written but wanted some illustrations that really popped. I met Nat Kusinitz at a craft fair at Bard College where he was tabling some of his original drawings. I absolutely fell in love with his style and asked if he would collaborate on this book with me. ForThe Big Gay Alphabet, I enlisted Leela Corman, who I had met at a writing workshop with Lynda Barry. 

RMG: Do you make any other kinds of books? I.e. zines, artist books, etc.

JB: I was first introduced to zines in 1995 by my friend Rodica Weitzman who showed me some Riot Grrrl and radical self-care zines. I had agreed to facilitate a zine-making workshop for young people with her, so I had to figure out very quickly what they were all about! I immediately felt connected to this form of expression, having spent many hours making my own hand-drawn books as a child. It seems like such an obvious next step to me now, to photocopy your art and/or writing and pass it out to your friends, but it was such a revolutionary concept to me when I first heard about it! Now, when I teach zine-making workshops in schools or youth shelters, or just mention the idea of using a photocopier to a young artist/writer in order to replicate their work, I see the same light bulb go off above their head. I love introducing people to their neighborhood photocopier. It brings instant joy. It’s one of my favorite “tools”. I find great value in the process of creating something handmade. It activates an important part of our brains and hearts.

Zines prove to me time and time again that our work does not need to be validated by publishers in order to make a difference in people’s lives or be wildly loved. Zines give people belief in their own ideas; when you see someone else, maybe someone who isn’t scholarly, who has put things down on paper for others to read, you can possibly imagine yourself doing the same thing. You can still get my zines at Quimby’s in Chicago and Brooklyn, a place that has been a stronghold in the zine community forever.

RMG: You just released the Spanish version of one of your first books Las niñas pueden ser reyes - congrats, that's so exciting! How did the translation project come about? Do you think any of your other coloring books will also get translations?

JB: In 2009, I received an email from an educator in Nicaragua named Fernanda Siles who offered to translate Girls Are Not Chicks into Spanish after buying it at a conference. I could not have been more thrilled! But the translated document sat on my computer for nine years before my publisher was ready to turn it into a book. I would love if any of my other books got translated into ANY language. I currently have a translation of girls will be boys will be girls will be… in Russian sitting on my computer that a Vassar student did for me after I taught a workshop there.

RMG: Do you have any book projects in the works? Do you think you'll ever make a kid's story book, after all the coloring books?

JB: I just signed a contract on my first children’s story book! I wrote it in 2009 and kept revising it over and over for the last decade. I would show it to folks to get feedback, shorten it, etc. I found the work of Crystal Vielula at Bluestockings Bookstore. She self-publishes these fantastic coloring books featuring animals in fashionable outfits. I was obsessed! I asked her to collaborate on this book and I am really happy with how it is turning out.

RMG: What does a normal day in the studio look like for you? Do you have favorite tools or even music or podcasts that you like to have in the studio with you?

JB: There is no normal. Many days I don’t even make it into the studio because I have side hustles that pay the bills, such as doing home organizing for people. When I am in the studio, I listen to a lot of podcasts: The Daily, 1619, The Anthropocene Reviewed, Two Dope Queens, 99% Invisible, Code Switch, and StoryCorps are some of my favorites. I have a large antique bookshelf that my mom bought at an auction for me when I was a teenager. It is filled with books I cut up for collage. I usually feel the need to tidy up my space before beginning a project for the day.

RMG: Are there places/things that you look to for inspiration for your work?

JB: My guilty pleasure is design and home decor magazines. I love the colors, fabrics, and design ideas.

Jacinta Bunnell in her studio, image courtesy of the artist.

Jacinta Bunnell’s studio, image courtesy of the artist.

Thanks so much Jacinta! Check out the rest of her work at jacintabunnell.com and all of her books at queerbookcommittee.com.

On Writing and Painting, a Photo Session + Interview with Emma Grady in Cape Porpoise, Maine

Emma Grady is a writer and painter based in Brooklyn, NY. As Emma’s older sister, it’s safe to say that I’ve known her for a long time. I have always been immensely proud of her. We traveled home to Maine together in September, and took advantage of our time together to do a portrait session and a little Q&A which you can find below. I recently helped Emma redo her websites, so we wanted to get some fresh portraits to use. You can find her writing at emmagrady.com and her painting at emmagradystudio.com. Her writing has recently been featured on Man Repeller and Glamour.com.

Becca Grady: You do a lot of things, how do you describe them, what’s your elevator pitch?

Emma Grady: I’m a freelance writer for magazines focused on personal essays about (what I hope are deeply relatable topics), from romance to fashion. I’m also a copywriter for brands and a painter. 

BG: You've been writing and painting for a long time now. Can you talk a bit about how you got started? Have you always done both? 

EG: Yes, I studied literature, art history and painting in college. I’ve always been interested in fashion and when I graduated, I merged that with writing and became a fashion writer fresh out of school. I moved to New York City and was mainly focusing on getting my writing career off the ground and recently picked up painting again about 4 years ago.

BG: When did you first start painting? 

EG: I studied various mediums throughout school and loved drawing portraits. I was later drawn to abstract painting because I never quite knew how a piece would come out. I never paint with a particular goal in mind, I’m very much inspired by colors and the brush strokes and how it all interacts on the canvas. That’s what keeps me hooked, that element of surprise. 

BG: How has your style evolved over the years? 

EG: I’ve always been drawn to a classic style which is why I love vintage fashion so much. In my twenties, I almost never bought any new clothes and primarily shopped secondhand and vintage. Now that I’ve reflected a bit on my style, I see that I sometimes bought things because they were a great deal and not my style, so I tend to think more about bringing anything into my wardrobe. I’m still drawn to timeless pieces, but my day-to-day wardrobe is comprised of new investment pieces rather than vintage items. 

BG: How did you get started writing? I know that your writing practice has changed a lot, from writing about ethical fashion to more personal essays. Can you talk about that shift?

EG: My start in writing is based in ethical fashion and that will always be a part of me. After publishing more than 1,000 articles about fashion designers and their latest collections, I wanted to write about something personal and more specific to my experience. For example, I wanted to write about being a freelance writer from a small town in Maine and moving to a big city and all the ups and downs of that. I wanted to write what I like to read, which is personal essays that make you feel connected to those around you. 

BG: What are you working on right now? 

EG: I’m working on new pitches for magazines as well as a personal essay that I’m going to pitch to Modern Love. Pitching for me is spontaneous and I never know when I’ll get a story idea as I’m very much inspired by my daily life. I do, however, set aside time to think about how I can frame certain stories as well as read what stories magazines are publishing. 

BG: I'm always interested in how creatives who work in different media balance their practice. Does writing and painting feel like separate practices to you, or do they overlap? Where do you find your inspiration? How do you think about them? 

EG: I view painting and writing as very separate though my process is similar. When I paint, I turn off my brain a bit. I don’t think about what I’m doing, it just happens. Similarly, to writing, when I have an idea, the story writes itself. That is creative inspiration to me, there is no struggle, it feels easy. 

BG: What is a typical day in the studio for you? Do you have any writing or painting routines? Do you have a favorite tool or music that you have to listen to? 

EG: I listen to the same music when I write as I do when I paint, which is electronic house music. There’s something about listening to my favorite DJs — like Lane 8, Amtrac, Rüfüs du Sol — which makes me feel energized and excited. It’s the same music I listen to when I run as well. I like to zone out any outside noise so I can focus. As any writer knows, being interrupted and losing your train of thought when you’re in the middle of a story is not so much fun. 

BG: Do you have any favorite writers or artists that you look to for inspiration?

EG: I’m one of those writers who is always afraid of being influenced by other writers but it’s unavoidable. I love The Cut’s Ask Polly column, that’s one thing I like forward to reading always.

BG: You live in New York - there are so many good museums there. I think my favorite museum trip we ever did together was when we went to the Met Cloisters. I'd never heard of it until you told me about it, and it's in such a beautiful museum in an amazing spot on the north side of the city. Do you have places in the city that you like to return to like that? 

EG: The Met still remains my favorite museum. It’s actually fun to go alone, to daydream and go at your own pace. I went to Florence and Paris last year and wandered around the museums there. I’m particularly drawn to landscapes and portraits. I always wonder about the people in them, which appeals to my background in art history. 

Emma’s painting, inspired by the colors of New Mexico, hanging in my home in Santa Fe.

Two of Emma’s smaller paintings, on display in my home in Santa Fe.

Thanks Emma! To see the rest of Emma’s paintings head to emmagradystudio.com, and find her writing at emmagrady.com .

Behind the Scenes - In the studio with Lady Krispie

I love a good behind the scenes story. Of course I love seeing finished photos as well, but there’s just something so magical about seeing the curtain lifted a bit and getting a peek into someone’s studio and process. I have a whole pinterest board dedicated to studio photos.

I had a lot of fun with the Lady Krispie shoot last month, so I thought that I’d share a few photos from behind the scenes to offer up a peek into my own studio.

It was a bit of a stormy day when we did the photoshoot, a typical New Mexico spring day with rain, snow, hail and sun intermittently. I love working with natural light, so to make the most of it, I set up my large studio table underneath the studio skylights and opened the garage door as wide as possible. (Yes, it was cold!) For the shoot we used my studio table, one that I put together with wood and sawhorses from Home Depot.

In preparation for the shoot, we moved all the furniture to the other side of the studio to create an open space to photograph in. It’s rare for folks in the studio complex that I’m in to have their garage doors open, so I got a lot of inquiring neighbors taking a peek at what was happening inside as they walked by.

For the shoot, we wanted to get a lot of in process photos, so I photographed Molly assembling her cake first, and then photographed the finished dessert. I use a number of photo backdrops that I got from Ink and Elm. They are light and roll up, so it’s easy to store. I like using them because it offers a bigger variety for backdrops, and I don’t have to have ten different tables in the studio to photograph on.

Studio Visit: Marian Runk's New Album Release "A Few Feet From The Ground"

Marian Runk is my best friend. She’s also a super talented musician, artist, and illustrator. She’s released her very first album (which she also illustrated all of the album art to go along with it). And she’s got a big release show with her whole band this coming week in Chicago (March 29th at Hungry Brain!). I wish that I could be there to celebrate in person, but since I can’t, I’m excited to share her work, and a little Q&A with her here.

Marian and I met in Chicago, when I was still in art school, and she was fresh out of college in Ohio. We had a lot of mutual friends, and she moved into the big Humboldt Park apartment I was living in (with it’s tiny bedrooms and a huge attic studio space). We became fast friends, and I’ve loved seeing her art and music evolve over the years. I couldn’t be more excited about her new album “A Few Feet From The Ground”, and hope that you all love it as much as I do! Read on for more about her creative practice and how got started with music.

BECCA GRADY: Can you tell me how you got started playing music? And what made you pick up the guitar and banjo?

MARIAN RUNK: I grew up learning classical piano, but quit before high school, to focus on ballet (which I then gave up for visual art & college). I didn’t return to playing music until I turned 30--  I signed up for a voice class at the Old Town School of Folk Music here in Chicago. I’m not exactly sure why I did that; it felt a little like a "mid-life" crisis. A coworker said something nice about my voice when I was singing along to the radio at work, and I do remember thinking it would be cool to learn how to control my breathe more, so singing would be easier and more fun.  Once I started singing, I needed to accompany myself, so my girlfriend at the time lent me her guitar and taught me a few chords. We were part of a really awesome small choir called Queer Quoir, which was a singing group open to all gender identities & singing abilities. It was led by Jackie Boyd, who sings harmony vocals on my album. The first time I ever played guitar for an audience was at a Queer Quoir show, the night Whitney Houston died. We finished singing and started crying. I think you were there?!  Somewhere around that time, I started taking guitar classes at the Old Town School, and writing songs, and then I just kept going.

BG: Yes, I remember that show! Up in Roger’s Park I think, everyone was crying at the end!

MR: Banjo came a little later. If guitar was a practical choice, banjo was for my heart! I was going to a lot of local bluegrass and old time & country shows, and I was really digging the banjos. When a banjo enters a song, I feel something slow down and relax/regulate in my chest, it’s hard to explain. Most things I know about the banjo, I know from Jonas Friddle (local songwriter, banjo player, teacher, and friend). I also have to pause and give Carol Kagy & Steve Dawson & Chris Walz (all teachers at the Old Town School) a huge shout-out, they’re responsible for my adult music education and are my heroes. 

Image courtesy of Marian Runk

BG: You also write and illustrate books. How does that process compare with writing music and songs? Do you think there is some overlap?

MR: I’ve been thinking a lot about this, recently. It’s a struggle to maintain focus on one discipline without feeling like I am sacrificing the other. They do relate to each other, but the truth is, for me, they more often compete. The common thread is narrative. I make comics, a narrative form of visual art. And I write (mostly) country songs, which primarily tell a story. But as I’ve been focusing more on songwriting in the past couple years, I think my artwork & books are becoming less narrative. Maybe I’m telling the stories through music, so images are free to be more independent? At first this made me anxious, but now I’m trying to chill out and see what happens. For example, I enjoyed drawing for the album booklet! The songs are telling the stories; I just needed the artwork to be adjacent to, or support the subject matter, not illustrate a specific through-line. 

One overlap is that I love the process of editing. The hardest part, for me, is getting the core of the project onto the page. Then there’s that intermediate phase, when the drawing or the word or the melody is inexact, not quite ready. I love re-arranging, finding the better rhyme, shifting a melody note up or down, erasing and moving an eye just a millimeter so that a character looks shocked instead of mad. Once the core of the piece is out, I know that it’s going to happen, and I start to enjoy the work of shaping it.

A Few Feet Off the Ground, image courtesy of Marian Runk

A Few Feet Off the Ground interior pages, image courtesy of Marian Runk

A Few Feet Off the Ground interior pages, image courtesy of Marian Runk

A Few Feet Off the Ground interior pages, image courtesy of Marian Runk

BG: One thing that I especially love about this album is how the album art and the music seem to tie together your illustrations, writing and music all in one. With the beautiful printing and binding of the booklet that accompanies the cd, it feels like the perfect melding of your creative practice.

MR: Thank you!  I did try very hard to bring all the sides of my artistic practice into this one package. An album seems like the one place where my art & music most naturally cohabit! The booklets & packaging were printed by Perfectly Acceptable Press; I’ve been wanting to work with Matt Davis for a while, and this was a great excuse! He does amazing things with Risograph printing. Thus far, I always bind my own books...although it’s not the most intelligent use of my time, I enjoy using the sewing as an opportunity to slow down & listen to music, and it seems like the least I can do to honor my MFA in “Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts?”

BG: I’m so excited about your new album, I’ve been listening to it a bunch. I love that there are some songs that I’ve seen you play before and some new ones as well. Can you tell me a bit more about what the process of putting together your first album was like? How long did it take you?

MR: Thanks so much! I love that you’ve been there from the start & have seen some of these songs in their first lives! As you know, some of them go back as far as 2013; so it’s been a long process! Because I’m newer to my instruments, I think my songwriting has been ahead of my playing-- I waited until I felt more sure of myself musically before recording. At the end of 2017 I decided my only goal for 2018 was to record an album. So I got in touch with Steve Dawson, and booked studio sessions with him at Kernel Sound Emporium. It was time! We started work in February, recording in short sessions here and there through May, I think? By fall all the mixing and mastering magic was done, so I started on the artwork and packaging design, and released the album at the Chicago Art Book Fair in November.  The whole experience has been wonderful and exhausting. It feels like every day I’m doing something brand new, that I’ve never done before. Next time I’ll know what I’m getting into, but at each step I've been texting my musician friends & mentors for advice, and spending hours researching things related to mastering and digital distribution and copyright and publicity, etc., etc. I’m so privileged to have these folks in my life to turn to! The first thing I did when I decided to record an album was start making a list of all the people I wanted to thank in my liner notes (we should pause now so everyone who has the album can read through them). I love reading other people’s “thank you” sections. I just found an old Indigo Girls C.D, and they included 2 full pages of “thank you’s!” That’s a magnificent thing.

Marian Runk, photographed by Gillian Fry

BG: When is your release show? Do you have any other shows coming up?

MR: I’m FINALLY having my full-band album celebration in Chicago this Friday, March 29, at the Hungry Brain! I’m so excited to perform all the tunes live with Jackie Boyd, Steve Dawson, Andrew Green, Jess McIntosh, and Andrew Wilkins. Jess’s band Joybird is splitting the bill; it’s going to be a really special night. After that, I’m doing a duo set at Montrose Saloon on April 27 (with Andrew Wilkins on bass), and we'll be on the Thursday Night Live radio show, 88.3 FM (WZRD, Chicago), on May 23. I'll also be tabling at the Chicago Zine Fest and CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo) this spring/summer. 

BG: Where can people find your music? And your books?

MR: The album CD + booklet is available on Bandcamp. It’s also on most of the other digital platforms (Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon....). You can find my comics & zines at Radiator Comics online, and Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago. My website is a good hub for connecting to all of those places! 

Marian Runk’s upcoming show poster, image courtesy of Marian Runk

BG: What’s next? I know you’re still releasing the album and you’ve got some shows lined up, but do you have anything else in the works? More illustration projects? Will there be another album? Are you going to go on tour and come to Santa Fe? (fingers crossed)

MR: As excited as I am for the release show, and to get to play the tunes live with the band, I also can’t wait to focus on new things! I have some ideas for comics, and I’m really looking forward to writing new tunes and just spending time noodling around on guitar and banjo. I also have about ten million places I want to visit/tour--  Santa Fe is in the top 3! The spring and summer are filling up really quickly, but stay tuned for tour news, eventually it’ll happen, I promise.

BG: When you’re not drawing or playing music what else do you like to do?

I’m a “birder,” so on weekend mornings you’ll often find me out by the lake or river or in a forest preserve (wherever it’s almost wilderness in Chicago), watching birds. On Fridays, I’m often at the Honky Tonk Happy Hour at the Empty Bottle, dancing to the Hoyle Brothers’ classic country sounds.  I also like to dance to Prince albums, play Scrabble, read comics & poetry & novels by my friends, drink Margaritas year-round (in winter, they bring summer indoors!), and hang out with my cat, Rosie.  Rosie is named after the Emmylou Harris album “The Ballad of Sally Rose,” and one of the times I feel the deepest joy is when I’m in the waiting room at the vet’s office, and I hear the staff call out her full name, “Sally Rose.” My partner and I spend a lot of time staring at the cat lovingly; he's almost as obsessed with her as I am.

BG: What are you listening to?

MR: That’s the question I always want to yammer on about! This past week, I’ve been listening to Joybird’s new album, Landing, on repeat. I wake up singing the songs! I’ve also been listening to Michael Chapman’s new album, True North (seeing him live at the Hideout about 6 years ago, and listening a lot in particular to his album Time Past, Time Passing, made a huge impression on me as I was starting to write songs).  Also-- Amythyst Kiah, The Secret Sister’s new album “You Don’t Own Me Anymore,”  Robbie Fulks, Leyla McCalla, Croy & the Boys, Chris Stapleton, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers. Chris Stapleton is funny in this situation because one of his older songs is called “What are you listening to?”.

You can find Marian Runk on her website, Instagram, Facebook, Bandcamp, Spotify, and iTunes.

Thanks Marian!

Studio Visit: In Sweden with Malin Ståhl

Fainting (Spruce)  - Photograph courtesy of Malin Ståhl

Malin Ståhl is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm. She creates multi-layered narratives dealing with topics including landscape, art history and gender. Through performance, photography, and video she tells her stories using a cast of recurring characters - Miss Wedding, Death and Fratercula Arctica to name a few.

I first met Malin over ten years ago when we were both studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was on a semester exchange from the Iceland Academy of the Arts. We kept in touch over the years and it was my pleasure to catch up with her at an artist residency in Sweden last fall: the Artist Colony. You can read more about my time at the residency here. I'm excited to share Malin Ståhl's work here - read on for a Q&A about her work and inspirations. 

Becca Grady: What drew you to performance art? As long as I’ve known you (over ten years now) you’ve been interested in the theatrical. Did you try out other ways of making before you found performance art?

Malin Ståhl: I started out in painting and then shifted into sculpture. There was a sort of performative element surrounding the creation and handling of the object that I found interesting. Gradually this made it possible for me to approach performance as a medium. I started doing performative acts for the camera and they became prints that I stored in a drawer as I didn’t know what to do with them.

Later on when I went to art school I found a platform for showing and talking about the performance work that I was doing. 

Fainting (Spruce) - Photograph courtesy of Malin Ståhl

BG: Many of your performance works and videos have pastoral settings - in a field, at the water’s edge, the top of a mountain, in the forest, or on a stage. Does the expansiveness of space in more rural areas become the stage for you? Do you find it easier to work in spaces that are more removed from people?

MS: My practice revolves around the subjects of landscape, body and costume. I look at historical and cultural links, primarily between body and landscape but also between body and animal. I am interested in the overlap and connections between folklore, religion and science as well as the exigency for transgression that exist between these. 

A lot of my work is probing a relationship to a natural setting, the situation of being surrounded by nature. I think my work feeds off this relationship and I am not sure it could really exist without the scenery that these locations provide. I definitely find it easier to work in remote places where there is less human interference.

Death Waiting (Dawn) - Photograph courtesy of Malin Ståhl

BG: Your work has a large cast of characters, mostly played by you, and in some works other artists have re-imagined your characters. Your characters often reappear in different works. Is there a character that you've been working with the longest? Do you have a favorite character to play?

MS: For a long time my work centered around these characters that I invented. There were many clowns, and in a way I think of most of them as clowns even though this is less clear in some cases. The historical role of the clown is to be the mediator of feelings that are to large to contain and the clown will take these feeling upon himself and act them out and so relieve the original bearer. This idea of the too large feelings and the way these make someone act really fascinated me for a couple of years and I found inspiration in pop music and romantic movies.

Gradually I have left this cast of characters behind and it is now only the more stubborn of them that keep popping up in my work. One such character is Death which draws its inspiration from the historical depictions of death within Christianity, a skeleton man walking around and luring people to follow him.

Death Waiting (Dusk) - Photograph by Elisabet Rydell-Jansen

BG: Your work has a lot of magical and otherworldly undercurrents. Where does your interest in these themes come from? 

MS: People are getting further and further removed from having a relationship with nature, and rarely do we feel a personal dependency on nature. It is not long ago that we were fully dependent on nature and then we were also close to myths and folklore. These phenomena that have become quaint appearances were once very real within peoples belief systems. This really fascinates me.

In my work these references function as a mediation of the unknown qualities within the landscape that surrounds us. On a larger scale they also function as symbols for the hope that anything can happen, which ties back to my past interest in girls culture.

BG: You mentioned that you have made many of your works in and around Duved and Åre, Sweden. What is it about this place that makes it such great place to work?

MS: I have a very strong relationship to the area having spent a significant part of my childhood and youth skiing and hiking in the mountains there. I somehow feel a personal affiliation with the snow, the trees and the shape of the landscape, still much in the way a child would relate to the territory of their play, a sort of unspoken territory. I used to know the exact look and feel and smell of the moss and lichen on the ground. Now I know it from a perspective that is based more in memory than in a direct relationship and I want to insert my art into that situation.

The cabin in Duved, Sweden 

BG: When you’re not in Duved, where is your studio?

MS: I have a studio in Stockholm where I live. I use the studio to research and make sketches for new work. I make costumes, paintings and props for my pieces and this is also where I edit and produce the videos which often are the result of the interventions into the landscape.

BG: How do you develop your performances? Do they start with an idea? Or a costume? Or a setting? Which usually comes first? 

MS: My performances often start with an idea. This idea is usually coming out of a visual impression, or something I read about and then imagine what it would look like. Most often I am inspired by ideas about the organization of the world in different situations, contexts and times. This might often be expressed through the body and the way the body is poised through times and ideas. Things that inspire me, that ticks my imagination or make me find these connections are often depictions of characters in myths and folklore, historical dance performances and contemporary fashion editorials in magazines.

The Forest of Trees - Photograph courtesy of Malin Ståhl

BG: What are you working on now?

MS: Right now I am in the process of working on a new performance piece that will be show in Åre this year. It will center around the process of making ice cream and the role unicorns play in that.