24161 Special Issue admittingly set my painting aside for political reasons, I have been able to move into my new space and recently began working again. Because of this change to video more so than visual desire, I am looking to record the process and hope to collaborate with willing musicians to completment the mixtures of colour as I blend and stretch them to a final result. As this is also entertaining, it can provide more into what it take to create the result, but also provide a new audience for my work as well. Thaddeus Laugisch ART Habens
Special Issue 24173 We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Thaddeus. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? R.19.RWB.12x12x.25 ART Habens Thaddeus Laugisch
Lovis Inspiravit, 11x14x.187 Thaddeus Laugisch ART Habens 24161 Special Issue
Melancholy
24181 Special Issue Thaddeus Laugisch: Currently I still design commercial ag facilities and proud for the many designs that are now built in my regional area. As I am still politically active in a party caucus to focus on the rural communities of Minnesota, I’ve slowly been able to paint and create again. At the beginning of this year, I helped establish and currently design for The Riverside Workshop, where we provide not only custom and personalized gifts, but also provide local production and consultation for other local artists. Lastly, I have done a few trial workshops to see how others would take to ‘Glassology’ depending on their experience with creating art. Both levels have had promising results that future workshops seem promising. I also want to thank you, the viewers for your time in reading thus far. If you enjoyed the images provided, I’ve been told you need to see them in person for yourself, thanks again. Lovis Inspiravit 11x14x.187 Pura Terra 16x14x.187 An interview by , curator and curator Thaddeus Laugisch ART Habens
Special Issue 4012 Ascension III, mixed media installation, dimensions vari
2 Special Issue Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens video, 2013 024 able, 2021
ART Habens Jordi Rosado Special Issue Potential, acrylic and enamel, mixed media, dimensions variable, 2021 403
Stephanie Sherwood Stephanie Sherwood Hello Stephanie and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://stephaniesherwoodart.com and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training: you hold a Bachelor of Arts in Drawing and Painting, that you received from the California State University and you have had the chance to study at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, in China: how did experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural background and your work as a curator direct your current artistic research? Stephanie Sherwood: Thank you for the warm welcome! Yes, I received formal training during my time at CSULB as well as the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. The year I spent in Guangzhou, China was at the end of finalizing my degree and an opportunity to work in a completely new environment and with a new cohort of fellow art students. That time away from the United States really helped me find my voice as an artist and upon return I began a series of paintings which dealt with the reverse culture shock I felt. Since then, I have explored several different series of works and been able to keep the momentum of my studio practice. I would say that both my cultural background and my work as a curator have a bit of a nomadic influence on my current research which certainly has influenced my choices as an artist. I am mixed-race and grew up moving around 404 Special Issue An interview by , curator and curator the country a lot and got used to change and having to adjust to new environments often. As a curator, I tend to really respond to the space I am curating to both in the architectural sense and in the historical/cultural sense. Of course with the series on the streets the work is highly nomadic. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of ART Habens —and that
Special Issue 24053 our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article — has at once captured our attention for its unconventional beauty, as well as for the way it achieve to unveil a point of equilibrium between chaos and rigorous sense of geometry, providing the viewers with such immersive and multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea of Confine? In particular, do you you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Stephanie Sherwood: The Confine Series has inhabited my mind for about three years now. It began really from an earlier series of painting raw meat and body parts which then moved into a fascination with shopping carts full of detritus as a common sight on the streets of Los Angeles. Confine was born out of the realization of my own fascination with those subjects with the moment of tension that arises when the structures came into contact with the soft matter. The core of my practice is drawing from life, so in beginning the Confine series I was drawing various still life setups I would make and made several paintings of this. At this point, the imagery is already built into my system, so to speak, so that painting them is now very instinctive. You are a versatile artist and your practice encompasses the use of unconventional materials as cardboard, wood and leather. Contemporary practice has forged a new concept of art making involving such a wide and once unthinkable variety of materials and objects: would you tell us what are the properties that you are you searching for in ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood
24061 Special Issue Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens Confine in Situ (Dressers), enamel on found discarded furniture and bottles, 62 x 48 inches, 2019
ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood Special Issue 24073 Confine in Situ (Television), enamel on found discarded furniture, 29 x 27 x 21 inches, 2019
ART Habens 24081 Special Issue the materials that you include in your artworks? Stephanie Sherwood: Fantastic question! Materiality plays such an important role in my practice and the materials I choose to use are constantly shifting along with my practice. I was trained to paint in oil primarily and learned to layer and compose in that manner. As my practice developed, I fell in love with house paint for its viscosity and the palette which is heavy with white and speaks to the soft, fleshy nature of a lot of my subjects. In that way, I paint like an oil painter with this enamel paint. I also love cardboard – it was the material I leaned into when I started to explore sculpture more actively. I love the history of how the Dadaists used it and I love that it is a commonly discarded material which naturally has associations with the abject. Although I did paint on canvas until recently, my In Situ works have pushed me into this fascination with the ephemeral and so I have been painting on more delicate surfaces like paper and cardboard. Canvas just feels too permanent and not the right fit for me at this time. There's a stimulating harmonic contrast between the severe, sharp geometry of the shopping carts and the saggy still almost sensuous fleshy forms in it. In this sense, your works create new kind of hybrid languages able to challenge the viewers' perception. French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas once remarked that Art is not what you see, but what you make others see: how would you consider the degree of openess of the messages that you convey in your creations and how open would you like your works to be understood? Are you Stephanie Sherwood
Confine in Situ (Produce Display), enamel on found discarded furniture, 72 x 120 inches, 2019
Special Issue 24093 particularly interested in arousing emotions that goes beyond the realm of visual perception? Stephanie Sherwood: Yes! I would say that leaving the meaning more open for interpretation is part of what I was considering as I began the Confine series. I actually did not want to have the basket or the material inside to be easily identifiable as I want viewers to be able to freely interpret them. Certainly I think this openness allows for a wider range of responses that can go beyond only visual perception. ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood SNAPSHOT 3, acrylic and enamel on paper, 49.875 x 41.25 inches, 2020. Photo by Justin William Galligher.
24101 Special Issue While the shapes of your works communicates contrast, the tones that you choose are particularly delicate and communicate sense of release. How do you structure your palette in order to achieve such results? And how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your artworks? Stephanie Sherwood: Ah yes, color. Looking back on my development as an artist, I think color was the thing that came naturally to me – I already had a good sense of subtle color Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens SNAPSHOT 4, acrylic and enamel on paper, 49.875 x 41.25 inches, 2020. Photo by Justin William Galligher.
Confine in Situ (Refrigerator), enamel on found discarded furniture, 30 x 70 x 30 inches, 2019
Special Issue 2413 shifts and how to adjust the palette of a work. Of course I have developed more sophistication as I learned more about making art but color is still a very intuitive element of painting for me. In my recent work I have developed a more limited palette, I enjoy the resourcefulness of trying to make a finished work with only a few colors. Similar to my work as a whole and how it has developed, I like to allow the color palette to change and breathe over time. With their reminders to fleshy shapes, your works unveils the bond between materiality and perception. As viewers, we often tend to forget that a work of art is first of all a physical artefact with intrinsic tactile qualities, and we really appreciate the way, through sapient materic translation, your artistic production highlights the materiality among the viewer: how important is for you to highlight the physical aspect of your artworks? Stephanie Sherwood: I think the physical aspect of the artwork has become even more important to me as my practice developed. Once I became more invensted in sculptural objects such as Half-Breed, I was investigating how to combine materials which were once living bodies such as leather and sinew with the painted elements which signaled flesh. Potential was one of the first pieces I made which paired a sculptural object made of cardboard with a large painting on paper. These pieces were my answer to continuing the conceptual work of the In Situ series in the studio. I knew that continuing that series of painting in the streets at the pace I was wouldn’t be sustainable, but the concepts were so arresting that I needed to bridge the gap. It ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood
24141 Special Issue Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens Half-Breed, enamel on wood, leather, sinew, 20 x 15 x 16 inches, 2018
Special Issue 24153 ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood Ascension II, acrylic and enamel, mixed media, dimensions variable, 2021
24161 Special Issue couldn’t really just be about making a finished painting anymore. I wanted to consider the life the materials had before I painted them, and the life they would have after that. The ephemerality of paper and cardboard made sense to me, and adding objects to mirror the dimensionality of the street art pieces felt like a fun opportunity to explore that under the protection of the studio. This speaks to the tactile materiality of the work that comes across in photographs. Another body of works that has particularly fascinated us and that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled In Situ. It's important to mention that each piece is created in the site where the furniture is found, documented, and left for its ultimate delivery to the landfill, so each item carries with it the history of its use. American photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once stated, "the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings, they reveal so much about us": could you tell us something about your interest in found objects? Stephanie Sherwood: Yes of course, and I love that quote! In Situ has had a profound effect on my work. It is truly as if I am collaborating with the people who left the objects and leaving that conversation for others to encounter before they are taken to the landfill. The first piece in that series I made was entitled Confine In Situ (Produce Display) and it was a huge, white metal object in an alleyway. I think that it appeared to me like a canvas because of the size and color and inspired me to paint it. That being said, I tend to be an artist who acts first and then thinks it through and considers the Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens
Special Issue 24173 meaning. I was very excited about the layers of meaning that came along with painting these objects that could no longer serve the purpose they were intended for. As I found more things and made more works – I truly loved the moments of individuality of each object I found. Some things had tape on them where the owners had tried to repair them or little moments of customization like writing or stickers. Some of the furniture was already so artfully arranged in a pile or placed in a way that it already read like a sculptural object which I was excited to highlight with painting. There is an immediacy to all of these actions which I find intruiging – I tend to paint fast and I know the urgency involved with moving to a new place which can inspire a quick offloading of personal items. Your recent sculptures have also become urban art interventions on discarded furniture in Los Angeles: how does your everyday life's experience fuel your artistic research? Stephanie Sherwood: In my everyday life I keep very busy. I work as an art administrator and curator for the city of Los Angeles and the international airport as well as my own independent curatorial projects around the city. All of these endeavors keep me driving around the city a lot and I can find more materials and ideas for my work in this manner. Part of the practice for developing the In Situ body of work is driving around and planning everything out. I have a kit with my paint and brushes in the car and if I see something I can make a plan to paint it; I even have a network of friends and other artists who keep a lookout for furniture for me! I now only paint early in the morning so that I can finish within an hour of the sun coming up. This allows me to have good diffuse light so I can document the work before I leave it. You are an established artist, and over the years your works have been showcased in ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood Potential (detail), acrylic and enamel, mixed media, dim
24181 Special Issue many occasions, including your incoming solo Transit at the Max L. Gatov Gallery, in Los Angeles: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? By the way, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to the online realm — as Instagram — increases: how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens ensions variable, 2021
Special Issue Stephanie Sherwood: Engaging with an audience is always important and very rewarding for the most part. It is definitely changing and evolving as different contexts inspire a different way of engaging with the work. When the work is in a gallery or studio space for viewing, it is automatically treated and discussed as an art object – on the streets people are encountering it in a 19243 ART Habens Stephanie Sherwood Wide Body, acrylic and enamel on paper, 61 x 35 inches, 2015
24201 Special Issue manner that is out of the ordinary. I think about this a lot, what it might feel like to find something so strange out in the wild. I’ve had friends and other artists tell me they’ve encountered them on the street and it is very exciting! When people encounter me when I am painting their first instinct is that I am comitting a crime or something, but usually when they realize I am making art they back down and say “oh okay, this is fine”. Sharing documentation of artwork on a platform like Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/stephanie_sher wood_art) is an entirely different beast. And platforms like that are constantly evolving too! When I share a photo, typically I am engaging with other artists and curators so it is similar to a gallery setting in a sense. Now that there are other spaces on Instagram such as IGTV and Reels which I hear the algorithm is heavily promoting – in that sense the audience is more randomized like folks I might encounter on the street. I believe that art is for everyone though so I like to hear what folks outside of my community think about the work. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic production and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Stephanie. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Stephanie Sherwood: Thank you so much for a lovely conversation! Currently I am working on curating an exhibition entitled PORTALS at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro: https://www.angelsgateart.org/otw_pm_port folio/portals-2/ An interview by , curator and curator Stephanie Sherwood ART Habens
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2 Special Issue Dean Dablow ART Habens video, 2013 024
ART Habens Jordi Rosado Special Issue 403 Golden Column 305cm x 30cm, latex on wood
Dean Dablow Dean Dablow Hello Dean and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.deandablowart.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production and we would start this interview with a couple of introductory questions. You have a solid formal training. You began your studies at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point in Painting and Sculpture, but the camera became increasingly intriguing as a tool to make art, so you later began graduate studies in photography under John Schulze at the University of Iowa where you received your MFA with a minor in Sculpture under Julius Schmidt: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does such multifaceted cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? Dean Dablow: Let’s back up a bit to how I chose to become an artist. Every child is an artist but somehow most lose interest as they grow. That happened to me as well but I never lost my passion for making things. I was 16 when our family visited the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, Washington and I remember seeing an exhibit of art from around world. This had a profound influence on me and I asked my father to buy a set of oil paints. I made a few paintings that were terrible but was encouraged by a friend of my older sister. I once again, however, put painting aside and when I graduated from high school I had made no plans for my future education, not knowing what I wanted to become. Just before graduation, the principal at our school announced that an FBI recruiter would interview anyone interested in a career in this government agency. A friend and I decided 404 Special Issue An interview by , curator and curator to interview and we were later hired. I became a fingerprint technician. But after work, instead of heading directly to my apartment, I would walk around Washington to see the various museums. The National Gallery was one that I continued to visit time and again and it finally became apparent that art was the thing I had to do. I left Washington and began my art studies never having had an art class since 8th grade. I put everything I could into my classes taking every course I could. When I became interested
Special Issue 24053 in photography the school did not have any courses in this medium so I learned a few rudimentary things by myself. I was using my father’s camera but saved enough money later to buy my own 35mm. I set up my own darkroom and marveled at how the camera and chemicals magically produced actual photographs on paper. My senior show was both paintings and photographs. One of my professors suggested I show the photographs to John Schulze at the University of Iowa which I did and was accepted into graduate school. It was here that I became an artist. I had become used to asking my teachers at Stevens Point which works were good and then accordingly exhibit those. One day I was to submit photographs for a show in Chicago and I phoned Professor Schulze to ask if he wanted to see them for approval. He gave me a one word reply, “No.” It was up to me to decide ART Habens Dean Dablow
24061 Special Issue what was good enough. I call this my “grow up moment” when I was forced to make my own decisions. This was also a great freeing experience that gave me license to try new ideas. I began to challenge established ideas of composition, at times putting elements in the center of the frame, a no-no in basic design classes. My sculpture classes with Schmidt were more hands-on object making and I used the time to continue my interest in producing shaped canvases. That handwork skill-building has helped me understand construction techniques, surface treatments and the understanding that one must pay attention to detail. One thing about my photography experience was, like sculpture, that one had to pay attention to every part of what was in the Dean Dablow ART Habens
ART Habens Dean Dablow Special Issue 24073 viewfinder, how things that needed to be in or out of the frame made the photograph more interesting. Had it not been for my photography experience I would not be making the paintings I do today. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of ART Habens and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way it urges the viewers to question the nature of the process of perception as a whole, and even to rethink relationships between observer and observed. When walking our readers through your usual process and setup, would you tell us what did you address to such stimulating research? Dean Dablow: When I retired from teaching photography at Louisiana Tech University in 2007 I wanted to challenge myself again and returned to painting. What I did not want to do is make work that had already been done before. Quite a challenge and of course its all been done. Yet I wanted something new for me. I started making paintings by cutting shapes on hardboard and putting them together to make a whole, the visual psychology of closure and extension. Later I used a different substrate using hollow-core interior doors which I use to the present day. I use no frames as I believe they separate the work from the reality of the present. Edges are painted in place of frames. Early in my painting on singular pieces I used the rectangle as the base shape, painting variations within this typical presentation. Although this tactic seemed to be a reflection of paintings past, because I was using door panels I could easily cut into the rectangle with angles, alluding to the object not being a window to another reality but an object that must be seen in its entirety. They are not windows to the world.
ART Habens 24081 Special Issue Dean Dablow
Special Issue 24093 ART Habens Dean Dablow
24101 Special Issue The rectangle evolved into a freeform unrelated to the rectangle giving the viewer even more of a sense of object and illusion of space. This, in turn, evolved into another idea, painting with actual insertion of a physical line. Shapes were cut and installed on both sides of the linear element, sometimes vertical and sometimes horizontal. It then struck me that the horizontal works related to landscape and I began a series dealing with what I have experienced in various landscapes. I used the linear element as a horizon line with landforms above and below this line. This has been my working method. Each piece I do informs the next and follows what I believe is a natural evolution. Sapiently structures, your works feature as stimulating as unconventional tones: in particular, you included such unusual nuance of green in Grassland and Hills: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include moment by moment in your artworks? Dean Dablow: My early childhood was growing up in North Dakota and the experience of living in the open prairie and at times treeless landscape influenced my concept of color and space. Color is simply an association of memories of landscapes I have experienced. In your landscape series the concept of horizon plays a crucial importance: how do you consider the role of symbols and metaphors playing within your artistic research? In particular, are you interested in creating works of art rich of allegorical features? Dean Dablow: In all of the landscape series, the central line is meant to simulate the horizon which extends beyond both ends to suggest that the horizon goes on forever. We only know what we experience. I have seen grasslands simulate waves as the wind rakes across the Dean Dablow ART Habens
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24121 Special Issue plains, winters that sometimes make the foreground and sky seem like one, and deserts that flow into black distant mountains. These are visions expressed in my work. I have no interest in allegory. They are what they are and have no meaning beyond what the viewer invents for themselves. Dean Dablow ART Habens
Special Issue 2413 Your paintings invite the viewers to experience the work as an object, and they are also about that which we do not see. French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas once remarked that Art is not what you see, but what you make others see: how would you consider the degree of openness of the messages that you convey in your creations and how open would you like your works to be understood? Are you particularly interested in arousing emotions that goes beyond the realm of visual perception? Dean Dablow: Sand Dune Obscures the View of a Pyramid is a work that blatantly insists the viewer recognize something that is not physically present. The bottom is a meandering cut shape while the top is a 90 degree angle. It was not a work that was first thought through but an accidental recognition. Cutting door ART Habens Dean Dablow
24161 Special Issue panels results in having extra parts with which to make more work. I tilted the door corner remnant 45 degrees giving it the appearance of a pyramidal shape. It was at this point that the sand dune idea came about. Serendipity has played a lot in my work method. An idea comes through and I run with it. Dean Dablow ART Habens