music art film review - REDEFINE magazine » ridley scott

Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

Vivian Hua — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:18:00 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

Seattle artist Bette Burgoyne creates intricate colored pencil drawings that flow like the mechanizations of the universe. Inspired by geometry and pattern-based forms as well as nature, science, mathematics, and music, Burgoyne places heavy reliance on how perspectives and viewpoints shift and unfold over time. As she states simply in her personal statement, "My intention is to reveal a spectacle of wood, water, light and atmosphere; to share my enthusiasm for these processes and patterns that overlay, harmonize and echo one another." In the Q&A below, Burgoyne expands on this intention by describing her approach, factors that led her to her current body of work, and how music plays a significant role on her process.

PLEASE HOVER OVER ANY IMAGE TO VIEW IT HI-RES.

One who was looking at your work could easily think that certain sections were tree trunks or cobwebs or any number of other non-abstract things. Are there narratives or subjects to be found in your work, or are they simply geometric or pattern-based? Yes, there are tree trunks and cobwebs. And they are also geometric and pattern-based. I love the perceived universe as a place where everything follows mathematical structures.

How much of your work is additive versus subtractive? The drawings are 98% additive. Erasure dulls the lines and mars the paper, so I use it sparingly only to reduce occasional over-brights.

What kind of setting do you work in? I would imagine that work as contrasting and fine as yours would need a setting that would allow you to see well, spend a large amount of time, etc. There is no art studio, so I work at home where it's comfortable, chair or couch. On my lap is a pillow and on top of the pillow is a piece of foam-board supporting the drawing. I wear reading glasses and have a lamp nearby. A devoted time commitment is inevitable for these drawings. There is music on the stereo, always.

What is it about black and white and grayscale that most interests you? Do you ever consider working with colored paper or pencil? Not sure why, but I flourish under the limitation of monochrome. I hope to offer an alternative to the abundance of sharp contrast and unrelenting bold colors that fill our urban situation. It's not that I don't enjoy the oomph of Helvetica signs and neon spandex; I just want to have another choice. There are a handful drawings I've made using red, gray, and brown paper with various colored pencils, but black paper is the mainstay.

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

How do you feel about the spreading of your work upon the internet, as it is obviously of a type which gets somewhat lost in translation? Sometimes the internet is the only venue available. It's nice connecting with people who appreciate what I'm up to. Without the internet exposure I wouldn't have become acquainted with some wonderful Eastern European artists who I feel artistic kinship with.

I would like to talk a bit about Scroll; is that the largest piece you've worked on, and how difficult was it to gain perspective on it? Scroll was the largest before February, when I began working on Forest, a 30-foot-long drawing that is slowly building. Time makes perspective easier. When I work on a drawing for an extended period I become a lost myopic, so I hide the drawing from view for a day while I'm running errands. When I see it again portions become clear and the drawing tells me what to do next.

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW Bette Burgoyne - Forest (progress photo) Bette Burgoyne - Scroll Zhang Zeduan - QingMing ShangHe Tu

What led to the decision of using video to document this particular piece? I wanted to share Scroll with people, and a video on YouTube and Vimeo seemed a good way to do it. No actual videotaping took place. A large .tiff file was made from the drawing at Art & Soul, and it was edited andtransformed into a panning video by 4th Wall Films. There is a lovely panning video of a Chinese landscape painting by Zhang Zeduan you should see.

You gained permission from Animal Collective, Rough Trade Publishing, and Fat Cat Records to use the track in the video; how difficult or involved was that process? Animal Collective received my email describing what I had in mind for their beautiful languid song "Visiting Friends". Included was a link to my site. They emailed back, "Looks cool", and included email addresses in order to get full clearance of "Visiting Friends" from Fat Cat and Rough Trade. It all took about 2-3 weeks.

The work on your website only spans back to 2009. How has your work evolved through the years? I created sculpture and installation for several years before a series of deaths and heartbreak altered my life course. The early 2000s was a four year period of creating scherenschnitte from black paper. After the 2008 bout with cancer and chemo, I began to create drawings from a place essential, shedding the layers of cleverness that was part of the earlier work.

As an older artist, how do you feel about the Seattle art scene right now -- how it has changed, where it is, and where you think it is going? It is good see more women artists receiving recognition, maybe we'll achieve balance someday? My favorite thing in the current Seattle art scene is First Thursday Art Schlock.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

AU – OJ + Ida Walked Away Music Videos (Interview w/ Luke Wyland & Director Takafumi Tsuhiya)

Vivian Hua — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:26:00 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

AU – OJ + Ida Walked Away Music Videos (Interview w/ Luke Wyland & Director Takafumi Tsuhiya)

The rambunctiously chaotic music of Portland's AU is translated into bright visual forms when processed by Japanese animator and video artist Takafumi Tsuhiya. Both the director and AU's frontman, Luke Wyland, speak below about their collaborations for this year's "OJ" and 2010's "Ida Walked Away", along with how they've each grown in that time period.

AU - "OJ" MUSIC VIDEO

"I believe there is something universal in [how] sounds correspond with visuals [that] is over the boundaries of language." - Takafumi Tsuhiya

How did your collaboration and association first form? For the first music video ("Ida Walked Away"), the person from record label which released the Japanese edition of AU's second album introduced me to their original released label. And I was asked to make the video. I accepted the offer without hesitation. Because I was already big fan of AU from their 1st album. - Takafumi Tsuhiya If I remember correctly, the connection was made through Alec from Aagoo Records back when we were prepping to release the Versions EP. It's all been pretty hands off on my end. Thankfully, I've never worried much about what he'd come up with as I've loved everything I've seen him create. - Luke Wyland, AU

Who came up with the concepts for both "OJ" and "Ida Walked Away," and how closely did the both parties work together to create the final product? There was music first. And I listened to it carefully hundred times. There is no regulation for these and not so much discussion. They leave me all to myself. Just songs are very close in my mind. - Takafumi Tsuhiya Both of the video's were conceived entirely by Tak. We would deliver the songs and then wait a few months until he was ready to start showing us previews. As it's gone for bot,h there was never any need to change or asks for alternate versions. In a sense, trusting his artistic vision so blindly has been really enjoyable both times. - Luke Wyland, AU

This is your second time working with one another, and the video and music have both leveled up in terms of energy level and technical ability. In the past two years, what would you say has changed most about your creative output? Nothing changed in energy level at all. It's depends on where the inspirations came from. AU's music is always inspire me and take me to next level. In technically, I did a lot of commercial works in the past 2 years. This experience was feed backed to output. - Takafumi Tsuhiya For myself, a pretty drastic reconfiguring of our sound as well as the approach to our live show. This was also the first album written and recorded with Dana Valatka on drums, which had a huge influence over the energy of the album, though making Both Lights was honestly a pretty arduous process for me. It took far longer than any other album in the past and by far caused me more stress than anything I've ever produced in my life. But in the end, I was committed to seeing things through beyond the my usual breaking point of loss of enjoyment. Songs would go through numerous different permutations until I felt like they had taken on a life of their own. Sometimes it was simple blind (or stubborn) commitment that allowed me to see them through to the end. There were certainly moments when I almost trashed a few of the songs that eventually became some of my favorites of the album. - Luke Wyland, AU

AU - "IDA WALKED AWAY" MUSIC VIDEO

Do you think that different cultures have different associations to what sounds correspond with what colors or visuals, or do you think those are fairly universal ideas? I'm still looking for the answer. I believe there is something universal in [how] sounds correspond with visuals [that] is over the boundaries of language. And I always try to make something universal beyond a [singular] meaning. At the same time, I think they also contain unique to the region and cultural sphere. For example, South American artists are using color scheme totally different from Japanese. - Takafumi Tsuhiya I'd say one could go with either idea. Obviously each culture has its own associative language built up around their historical relationship with music and visual expression, but as the collective culture becomes more and more worldwide those connections become less tied to the spaces we grew up in. I see it more and more these days a forest of trees that each have been grafted onto differing root systems. Luke Wyland, AU

Do you agree that there is a resurgent interest in color, synesthesia, and kaleidoscopic music and visuals? If so, why do you suppose that is? I agree with this. Our interest has been moved [towards the] fundamentals of life. Something that cannot be explained in words would be more and more important.- Takafumi Tsuhiya I don't know if there is specifically a resurgence, or just more attention in the media paid to such things. For as long as I've been alive, I've felt pretty surrounded by a pretty prismatic culture. Whether from the neons of the '80s or the hippy/rave culture of the '90s, and now a strange amalgam of it all through this current time's nostalgic lens, things have felt pretty saturated with such things. If anything, it's this exact focus on nostalgia that may make it seem like there is a resurgence of interest. Just a thought. - Luke Wyland, AU

"Our interest has been moved [towards the] fundamentals of life. Something that cannot be explained in words would be more and more important." - Takafumi Tsuhiya

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

AU – OJ + Ida Walked Away Music Videos (Interview w/ Luke Wyland & Director Takafumi Tsuhiya)

Beca – Fall Into Light Music Video (Interview w/ BECA & Directors Dawid Krepski, Jason Chiu)

Vivian Hua — Mon, 21 May 2012 03:20:51 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Beca – Fall Into Light Music Video (Interview w/ BECA & Directors Dawid Krepski, Jason Chiu)

Drawing from antiquated influences and software, directors Dawid Krepski and Jason Chiu translate the hazy pop sounds of New York musician Beca into a narrative about the understanding and acceptance of the self, whatever that may look like. Below, both directors and Beca answer a brief Q&A about the creative process and underlying message of the "Fall Into Light".

"The title 'Fall Into Light' is a bit of a paradox since I associate light with upward movement, and the concept of falling makes me think of darkness. So it's this juxtaposition of light and dark which can be taken literally or figuratively, and I like that it's left open for interpretation. Maybe it means opening opening up yourself enough to see your true self." - Beca

How did the collaboration between the video artist and musicians first form, and how closely did you work together on creating the piece? Who conceptualized it?

"Fall Into Light" is available online or on 12" vinyl via iTunes or Phonica Records. More about Beca on her Tumblr. DIRECTION / PHOTOGRAPHY: Dawid Krepski Jason Chiu R E L I G I O N ACTORS: Kelsey Peterson, Fred Geyer EDIT: Dawid Krepski SPECIAL THANKS: Magadelena Gaca Michael Mckeogh

The collaboration was born on Vimeo. Mia Margetic, one of This Is Music's artist managers and creative curators, made a blind cast into the Vimeo ether. She was perusing the video groups and found Dawid's spec-music video for Yellow Ostrich's "Hahahaohhoho". She contacted him and asked if he'd be interested in pitching a treatment for Beca's "Fall Into Light". "Yes, of course I am!" And that's how it began. But when the process actually started we were essentially left on our own. The label had hired us to make something for Beca, which, at that point, was only this mysterious voice. Things were early in her development; there were no pictures, no website, no publicity. We believed it was partly TIM's intention to leave us without such context. We were excited to be working for TIM for this reason -- the label had a history of cultivating free-forming relationships with video artists. "Do as you please" was the only direction we got. It was a great opportunity. We had this sultry, misty voice to project our thoughts onto. - Dawid Krêpski & Jason Chiu I didn't have anything to do with the video which was a real exercise in letting go since I am usually very hands-on with the creative process in my projects. I was extremely surprised and pleased at the outcome since their interpretation is completely different than what I would have come up with as a visual representation for the song. - Beca

There is a haze this video that really contrasts with the pop sensibilities of this track. Why was that decision made, and how was it accomplished? We're really into emerging old-school visual content. This includes '80s and '90s video and film formats and various other image-generating technologies of those decades. For example, we're obsessed with the screen flicker seen on old 60hz cathode ray tube televisions. That haze and the general look of "Fall into Light" is partly the result of this fascination. The other part comes from how we undertstood the song: something along the lines of dark pop. The lyrics suggest an illicit, mysterious love; this sort of love is often very poetic and beautiful. We thought of love on the fringes, something that's obscured from popular view. To achieve this atmosphere, we chose to couple a visual style reminscent of '60s press commercials and photography -- very glamourous, simple colors, simple shades, almost like a painting - with a very restrictive aspect ratio. We hoped to evoke a desire within the viewer to widen the image, to take away the slim aspect ratio and see more of this love story. During production, we used the Canon 7D set to the MarvelCine picture profile. It supposedly flattens the colors and exposure information in the image. But at a certain threshold, it begins to mash these elements. What results is information smudging (we don't know any other way to put it). It over-simplified the visual information and generated the type of visual basis we were going for. In post-production, Dawid chose to use professional post-[production] software from the early 2000s. While the capabilities of the program might have been limited, it provided "dated" options that aren't present in today's post- software. - Dawid Krêpski & Jason Chiu I didn't have anything to do with that decision, but I would say that there is a distinct hazy quality to the track, particularly in comparison to my other work. I think Dawid and Jason picked up on that and represented it brilliantly. - Beca

How closely does the song’s sentiments of "falling into the light" play into the video's thematic narrative, and what would you say those words mean to you? We think the video's thematic narrative plays very closely to the song's sentiments. When you think of someone falling, it's usually into the depths of darkness. "Fall from grace" is a negative term we commonly apply. But these sentiments are all relative and always applied from the outside observer. When someone thinks you've "fallen," you might be having the time of your life. Forget what others think; do what feels right to you. If people think you've "fallen" in some way, they're too blind to see the light on the other side. Maybe think of a planet with a hole going straight through it. Say you fall through that hole -- gravity will suck you in. It might get a little dark, but that same gravity will slingshot you to the bright surface on the other side. You'll end up on the same level as everyone else, just at a different point. - Dawid Krêpski & Jason Chiu The title "Fall Into Light" is a bit of a paradox since I associate light with upward movement, and the concept of falling makes me think of darkness. So it's this juxtaposition of light and dark which can be taken literally or figuratively, and I like that it's left open for interpretation. Maybe it means opening opening up yourself enough to see your true self. Like being vulnerable enough to fall into a clear space where you realize that you're a woman in a man's skin. - Beca

How long did this process take from start to end, and how much time was spent on shooting versus post-production? We spent a solid 24-hour day shooting plus an extra half-day. Everyone's schedule was tight. Actors were busy. Dawid was leaving for Poland. I was going to New Mexico. We were exhausted. We started with night shooting, alert and ready with Kelsey. At sunrise we switched to Fred; by that time Dawid and I were so exhausted that we ended up destroying part of my apartment - an incident with a deer head that didn't even make the cut. When we came to post-production, we were less time-constrained. Dawid was able to take his time crafting an amazing edit and post- visuals. - Jason Chiu Ω

Influences

MUSIC PJ Harvey (DK)
Kanye West (DK)
Beck (DK)
The Dead Weather (DK)
M83 (DK, JC)
Neon Indian (JC)
Washed Out (JC)
Futurecop! (JC)
Alexandre Desplat (JC)
Prince (B)
Aaliyah (B)
DJ Shadow (B)
Nine Inch Nails (B)
Boards Of Canada (B)

ART Caravaggio (DK)
Piet Mondrian (DK)
Giotto (DK)
Vincent Van Gogh (DK)
Auguste Rodin (DK)
Anatol Knotek (JC)
Michiko Itatani (JC)
Mitch Cope (JC)
Akutou (JC)
Cari Vander Yatch (JC)
Salvador Dali (B)
David Lachapelle (B)
Audrey Kawasaki (B)
Aubrey Beardsley (B)
Jean-Michel Basquiat (B)

FILM Christopher Nolan (DK)
Ridley Scott (DK)
Francis Ford Coppola (DK)
Wes Anderson (DK)
Nicolas Winding Refn (DK)
CANADA (JC)
Keith Schofield (JC)
Daniel Wolfe (JC)
Saam Farahmand (JC)
So-Me (JC)
8 1/2 (B)
Bladerunner (B)
American Beauty (B)
Clockwork Orange (B)
Wolfgang Petersen (B)

LITERATURE Stanislaw Lem (DK)
Cormac McCarthy (DK)
Alan Moore (DK)
Neil Gaiman (DK, JC)
Rene Goscinny (DK)
William Gibson (JC)
Salman Rushdie (JC)
Jonathan Ames (JC)
Brian Wood (JC)
Oscar Wilde (B)
Aldous Huxley (B)
Arthur Rimbaud (B)
Vladimir Nabokov (B)
Richard Brautigan (B)

PHILOSOPHY Carl Jung (DK, B)
Mircea Eliade (DK)
Stanislaw Lem (DK)
Marshall McLuhan (DK)
Alex Kotlowitz (JC)
Paulo Cohelo (JC)
Hermann Hesse (JC)
Mahatma Gandhi (B)
Oneness (B)
Synesthesia (B)
Martha Graham

SCIENCE Stephen Hawking (DK)
Nikola Tesla (DK)
Michael Faraday (DK)
The guy who invented the wheel (DK)
Bill Nye (JC)
Carl Sagan (JC)
Anyone who believes in global warming (JC)
Galilei (B)
Fibonacci (B)
Copernicus (B)
Benoit Mandlebrot (B)
Stephen Hawking

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Beca – Fall Into Light Music Video (Interview w/ BECA & Directors Dawid Krepski, Jason Chiu)

Charitable Musicians: Red Fang Benefit Portland Arts Education (w/ Interview)

Peter Woodburn — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:34:50 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Charitable Musicians: Red Fang Benefit Portland Arts Education (w/ Interview)

It is no secret that the economic depression that has commanded the nation for the past four years has taken its toll on everyone. School districts nationwide are especially feeling the budget crisis, as falling tax revenues has forced some to get creative. Be it via hacking a month off of the school year or forcing teachers to take furlough days, it is, in the end, students who lose out most from these funding struggles. Portland's favorite beard metal band Red Fang are more known for their PBR-swilling music videos and heavy riffs than they are their level of social engagement. But when the Grant High School art department needed some funds to keep the art flowing, Red Fang did what all good metal bands would do: threw a benefit show. Like a carwash fundraiser, only with less bikinis, more beer, and more beards. In this interview, Red Fang's vocalist and bassist Aaron Beam talks about why the band got involved, and Maliq Rogers, a Sophomore at Grant High School, explains what impact the budget cuts have on his band, Hell's Parish, and the other students at the school.

"I think we need to re-program society to put a bigger emphasis on the arts, so that it would be inexcusable to cut an arts programs funding in the public schools." -- Aaron Beam

A Benefit For Grant High Art Department is scheduled to take place Friday May 25th at the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, Oregon. Red Fang will be headlining the event with support coming from Lopez, Nether Regions and Grant High's own Hell's Parrish. Doors for the show at are 7:00 pm with the first band hitting the stage at 7:30 pm. Tickets can be purchased for the show HERE.

A Note From Hell's Parish

My name is Maliq Rodgers, and I am the drummer of Hell's Parish and a sophomore at Grant [High School]. Grant is facing cuts in many elective classes, especially the arts. Our art classes are already running low on supplies and we have to change plans to work with our lack of supplies. Language classes are being cut as well. An active arts program helps kids find new ways to express themselves and have fun, and to explore different activities that they wouldn't have in other places. I've been taking some form of art through every year of school, and it's something that lets you branch out and express yourself in new ways and have fun [while] doing. The emphasis on standardized testing takes away from the arts in some ways, because core classes are the main priority of the education system, and that isn't going to change. Schools typically focus on English, Social Studies, and Sciences. Art isn't something you can always put into numbers and scores, but for someone who wants to pursue a career in some form of art, these classes can hold lots of value. Schools often hold fundraisers and benefits like the one we're playing, but that's not enough to fund the art programs. The economic struggles are nothing that a small group of people can fix, and the budget cuts aren't something that can change instantly. Personally, I think that everyone should try to share the knowledge that education is losing money. Maybe if enough people talk about it, someone in power will do something to change the situation. Nothing's easy, but people need to know what's going on and the more support the schools have, the better.

For more opinions on the topic, please visit any of the following links and articles: - Educator Voices: Impacts Of Budget Cuts On Oregon's Public Schools And Students - Thousands Rally Against Education Cuts In Portland, Oregon (May 2012) - PPS Students Speak Out About The Value Of Arts In Education (April 2012) - Vanishing Arts: Budget Cuts Or Lack Of Vision? (August 2011) - PPS Website

An Interview With Red Fang

Answers from bassist and vocalist Aaron Beam

How important is an active arts program in a kid's youth? Was it important in your youth? Extremely important. It develops the creative part of the brain which is useful in all aspects of life, whether you end up being an artist or not. It was utterly essential for me as a youth, considering I was not a very communicative person [and] felt very separate from my peers... the arts were really my only real form of emotional expression.

With such an emphasis being placed on standardized testing and such, do you see ways for schools to try and place any emphasis on arts with such limited funding available? I love The Economist newspaper, but in their views about American public education, I believe they are dead wrong. They repeatedly tout school programs (such as the ones Jeb Bush put in place in Florida) which tend to improve the metrics used for evaluating students' success. But those metrics always involve standardized tests, so what is really being measured is the effectiveness of teachers at training kids for tests that are most likely irrelevant to their future contributions to society. The impact of an arts education cannot be measured directly, so there is no way to justify its necessary expenditures in a board meeting.

School districts across the nation (and super especially in Oregon) are facing such extreme budget cuts in the face of the economic struggles, do you see any ways to make arts programs more self-sustaining? There probably are ways to make arts programs more self-sustaining, but I think that is not the direction we should be heading. I think we need to re-program society to put a bigger emphasis on the arts, so that it would be inexcusable to cut an arts programs funding in the public schools.

What will the funds for this benefit go towards, and how has the reception been on-campus with students, staff, etc.? Is the plight a shared and known one? I think most parents of high school-aged kids in Portland know about what is happening at Grant. I cannot answer specifically where the funds will go, but I have heard they will benefit all arts programs at Grant High (photography, sculpture, painting, etc.). As far as the reception goes, the art students are very excited, and some of the kids from one of the sculpture classes have a heavy metal band called Hell's Parish who will be performing at the benefit. The whole thing came about because a friend of mine is a teacher at the school, and she brought the funding issue to my attention.

I read that while you were in high school, you helped set up music programs for schools due to lack of funding. How was that accomplished then, what does this twenty year difference in contrast feel like? That is not quite what happened. While I was in school, we got wind that due to budget cuts, the marching band at my school (Fort Collins High School) was going to be cut. A group of students got together and attended the school board meeting at which the final decision was to be made, and we each stood up and presented our arguments for keeping the marching band program. The board ended up voting to keep the marching band. In all honesty, I sort of hated marching band (which was required for anyone who wished to play in concert band), but I was proud of the fact that we had one of the more successful bands in the region, and I also felt that regardless of my personal feelings about participating in marching band, that A) it is not fair to deprive other people who might want to participate, B) cutting any part of a high school's music program would set a very bad, dangerous precedent, and I could not allow that to happen.

Have you guys been involved with other benefits/charities, and/or do you have any plans to? We have performed a few other benefits, mostly for friends who have gone through trying times. Unfortunately, we cannot spend all our time doing benefits/charity shows since we need to be able to feed our families with income from this band, but whenever the circumstances allow and the cause is a good one, we re eager and willing to help in whatever way we can.

What is your creative process for coming up with THE BEST MUSIC VIDEOS EVER? 100% credit goes to Whitey McConnaughy, who writes, directs, and edits all of our videos.

See Video for Red Fang's "Prehistoric Dog" Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Charitable Musicians: Red Fang Benefit Portland Arts Education (w/ Interview)

Nicholas Bohac Artist Interview : Rearranging Oneself

Vivian Hua — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:41:48 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Nicholas Bohac Artist Interview : Rearranging Oneself

When Nicholas Bohac left behind the Midwest to pursue his artistic career in one of the most expensive cities in the country -- San Francisco -- the decision must have been both wise, for the connections and experience, and terrifying, for the potential financial burden. But thanks to a sympathetic landlord and a supportive wife with more gainful employment, Bohac lives in the SF's Outer Richmond neighborhood, within blocks of Golden Gate Park, and has a studio space that he shares with his landlord, free of charge. The garage studio is hardly one to lounge about comfortably in, but considering the skyrocketing housing rates of the city and its general shortage of space, Bohac is one lucky man. Bohac is one of a small percentage of artists who has the rare luxury of working on art at his leisure. His leisure, however, is not one to be taken lightly; he estimates that he created 15-18 mid-sized pieces, 165 small pieces, and participating in eight shows in 2011. 2012, though, is a new year -- and with it, comes a new approach. He has taken the time thus far in 2012 to step back and reassess his work and his direction. He is learning to be more choosy and to expect more from his work, at the same time that he is reconstructing what he wants his outwards-facing image to be.

Upon first glance, Bohac's works are complex and psychedelic in nature, full of unnatural colors and shapes. But despite how obscured, manipulated and tweaked they might be, their very cores are centered around landscapes -- one interest that is deeply-rooted and enduring in Bohac's life. After all, it is landscapes which drew Bohac from the Midwest, where he had lived his entire life, to the West Coast. "I came out here to visit a friend who had moved out here... [and] I just was like, 'Whoa, there's a lot of stuff out here happening that I've never seen before,'" he recalls. "I'd seen mountains and I'd seen oceans, but I think everything just coalesced together in this area, and it makes these really interesting landscapes." To pay homage to his new surroundings, Bohac began with painstakingly rendered tempera paintings based off of photographs he had taken of the ocean. Ultimately, though, it was attending art school and taking in critiques from others that refined Bohac's style from mere imitation to reimaginings of everyday scenery.

"I think one of the best things anyone -- any instructor -- ever said of me was when I was making two or three of these collage paintings at once, and they were all at night and you could see the blue sky and the stars. He said, 'Why don't you make the sky this pink?' and that's all he had to say, and all of a sudden everything opened up a little bit more."

"I'm [was in] school, so I [had] people who [were] saying, 'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this?' And from there, it just grew to get more tripped out and psychedelic," Bohac remembers. "I think one of the best things anyone -- any instructor -- ever said of me was when I was making two or three of these collage paintings at once, and they were all at night and you could see the blue sky and the stars. He said, 'Why don't you make the sky this pink?' and that's all he had to say, and all of a sudden everything opened up a little bit more." Bohac has now soaked in the West Coast landscape for years, and he is hoping to forge a new winning combination out of these experiences and every technique and style he has used in the past. "For me, [it's now] just taking a step back and saying, 'I've got a lot of stuff in this bag of tricks; what stuff do I use? What stuff do I shelf? And why?'" he explains. INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW Reemerging from Bohac's bag of tricks is everything from collage-based mixed media approaches ("I was making these paintings that were just like paintings on paper and then ripping it up and reassembling it") to figure-drawing stints ("I've stayed away from any sort of figures for four or five years, and now they're back, and they don't always make sense."). By drawings bits and pieces from his past, Bohac is playing an ongoing game of catch-and-release with his own artistic history. And though assessing one's own process of reconstruction is a difficult one, Bohac has some outside perspective to point him in the right direction. "I've got friends back in Omaha. They're in a band, and they were a band ten years ago when my band was a band. And they broke up for a while because they just got sick of it; they weren't making anything interesting," he explains. "They broke up, went on hiatus, or whatever... [but] a couple of them kept writing riffs; they got back together, and were like, 'Hey, that works really well with what I've been doing.' They just released a new album... and it's one of my favorite albums of the year. They took a break; they came back, they gambled, they tried something different. It's in their favor." INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW Hanging in Bohac's basement studio is a large 48"x96" canvas that spans a huge horizontal portion of the wall and almost its entire vertical height (an admittedly short vertical height, by conventional standards). There is hardly enough breathing room for one to take it all in, but the painting fits just well enough for one to gain a bit of perspective on it. The work-in-progress is a visible experiment of Bohac's sifting and editing his artistic style. In it is a newly reintroduced focus on human figures, alongside his signature color fields of landscape. Layers of water with varying degrees of transparency set a color block in the foreground while the sky is held together by an overarching figure that Bohac lovingly admits is a Dyson Sphere.

On Creating The Mandlebrot Range

"I’m a huge [Benoit] Mandlebrot fan, and it got to a point where.. [fractals were] just something I was thinking about all the time... I made [The Mandlebrot Range] while I was in Vermont... I opened up my browser or whatever, and brought up [Google Chat]. The first thing [my wife] said was, "Did you hear that Mandlebrot died? I saw it in the paper and immediately thought of you.” I started working on it and didn’t know where it was going to go. I was reading... essentially a biography about how Pixar started out and all of the trials and tribulations. They started working for George Lucas and Steve Jobs bought their company or whatever... out of everything that they talked about, the thing that stuck with me the most was... this guy -- I can’t even remember his name -- they employed... came up with this idea. When you ask someone to describe the shape of the mountain, they’d say it’s a triangle -- but when you look closer, that’s what a mountain is. But when you look even closer, you realize that what it is is millions of triangles. He wrote this software where he was able to render really realistic mountains, and it was the first time anyone had been able to do it, and all he did was he made a flat plane and hit so many points on that plane and told this one [to] rise up 1,500 feet. [Another] one rises up 3,000 feet, and from there, make more points out of it... what he ended up with was this leviathan that looked very much like a mountain range... This is all collage; it’s a carbon print I made of these flocks off the coast. And then I had that first strip on, and... I had just written something down. Just make something about mountains. Just a mountain. Then underneath it, I said, "Not Bob Ross,” or something like that, but it just so happened that [Mandlebrot] passed away, and the more I thought about it and the more I thought about what I was reading... yeah."

A Dyson Sphere, he explains with some excitement, is a sci-fi concept coined by theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson: "[Dyson] was like, 'Ay! Eventually we can probably build something around the entire planet and use that for communication.' If you've got a whole thing acting as a satellite, you can control the weather; you can move the whole planet, if you wanted to." The incorporation of the Dyson Sphere hardly had thematic significance, Bohac readily admits. Rather, it spawned from a visually-driven desire. "It's just something that is in the sky to try and play with the space -- [but] people don't need to read it that way, either..." Bohac says. This statement, although seemingly innocuous, is rather telling of Bohac's mentality. It reveals his scientific-leaning and curious nature, as well as his adamancy for not impressing his personal artistic interpretations upon anyone. What Bohac desires for his own work, he insists, is something that is "abstract but has a framework around it." "I want people to look at [my work] and say, 'Hey, this is this, but I can interpret this however I want, and because of that, I can interpret that whole painting however I want,'" explains Bohac. "I'm not trying to hold people's hands. I'm not trying to make titles that go and tell you a specific way to look at the painting... That's just the way I guess I am. I would never preach anything to anyone." The future of Bohac's artistic direction is "still kind of influx," but new and exciting developments are well underway. Once all the dust has settled, it seems certain that Bohac will be standing amidst rainbow-skied canvases with a renewed belief in his work. Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Nicholas Bohac Artist Interview : Rearranging Oneself