Iceworks

Last November we interviewed Gav Barbey about his new book Little Seed America. Now Gav is busy creating a series of 12 paintings, a commission from a boutique Sydney hotel. The series he is developing are Icework paintings – Slurpee-inspired blasts of colour. Gav struck upon this idea as he watched amazing patterns emerge and disappear when two long-forgotten frozen Slurpees were rediscovered in his freezer, one red and one blue, he laid them on a canvas to melt together. The happy accident led to the series Iceworks  –  a collection of paintings that involves the freezing of paints, dyes and pigments in water. The frozen candy-like ice blocks are then arranged onto canvas, the pigments swirl and run as the ice cubes melt, leaving a burst of colour in their wake. In the example above 64 ice cubes were placed on a one metre square canvas.

Jeremy Miranda

Jeremy Miranda makes paintings. Beautifully crafted paintings. We spoke with him about the narratives that run through his work and life on the North Shore.

Hi Jeremy, please tell us a bit about yourself, your environment, and background in art?
I live on the North Shore of Massachusetts, which is about 20 minutes north of Boston. My fiancé and I were drawn to this area because of the amount of farms, salt marshes and wild life preserves in the area plus its proximity to the ocean.
I graduated with a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 2004 and have been making my living as an artist and occasional teacher ever since.

What did you enjoy doing as a child? Did you make art, did you read?
I was always making art, but of course didn’t know it by that name. As a child I was driven by my imagination and was inventing worlds, characters and narratives. Every Christmas my grandparents would get me a big block of printing paper (the kind you can get at any office store), and I would burn through it in a few months with drawings of different characters, book ideas, landscapes, whatever interested me at the moment. Drawing didn’t become about a product until I was told
that I had a knack for it. It may sound a bit clinical but up until then, like any
child, I now realize that I drew to communicate my thoughts and to give them a tangible, visual equivalent.

Children’s books had an enormous influence on me (and still do). I read all
the Chris Van Allsburg books, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. I had a big collection
of field guides on minerals, insects and plants. I even spent my first year at college as an illustrator with the intent of making children books, but soon gravitated towards painting.

Do you still have the guides you collected as a kid?
Regrettably, I don’t have a single one, and couldn’t even begin to guess where they ended up. Nowadays I collect things found while out on walks. Driftwood, bracket mushrooms rocks, really anything natural with a unique form. We also have a growing collection of cacti.

There is a strong visual arts culture in Massachusetts, why do you think that is?
I’m not exactly sure, I would imagine that it has a lot to do with the sheer number of colleges and universities that have art programs in addition to the only state funded art college in the country.

Iceberg Nocturne

The iceberg paintings are an ongoing theme for you. What attracts you to them as a subject?
The iceberg series really began as an experiment in variation. I wanted a template where I was free to modulate the different elements, to observe a range of differences. Constable did a similar experiment with clouds, and of course there are the Monet haystacks which these are a bit of a nod to I guess. I also like the narrative of the lonely iceberg floating in the cold sea. I think it’s interesting how quickly inanimate objects become living things in our minds.

You play with facets of the icebergs and give them a curious architectural twist in some work? How many iceberg paintings have you made now?
The faceted icebergs are meant to imitate precious stones and gems. I don’t know exactly how many icebergs I’ve painted, but I imagine its somewhere near 100, give or take. I’m actually building a new website that will display all the icebergs I’ve painted so far in a large grid.

Faceted Iceberg

You place nature inside of interiors, or sometimes there is a sneak peak to an amazing view, or displaced object, like a ladder that links the underwater world to land above in Ladder No. 2.
The ladder paintings are metaphors about transition, more specifically going from what is familiar to something “other”, or foreign. They are more or less, romantic ideas about searching in the world.

Your paintings appear part of a broader story, they are not simply a moment in time or a one-off scene.
Yes, you’re completely right each painting is a component in a broader yet loose narrative about nature, technology and searching. I’m also very interested in the craft and how the paintings come off as physical objects, this is hard to see on
the internet.

Alaska

Some of your work gives a feeling a remoteness. The icebergs obviously, but also a greenhouse floating far from land, or the interiors.
The trick with all of these paintings is that while I’m painting them I’m imagining being witness to these events; being the one person on the beach who sees the greenhouse floating, or the one person looking out seeing the lone iceberg floating, or the one person stumbling upon a greenhouse illuminated in the woods. In that way, they are not exactly about isolation so much as they are moments when we get to be alone, which is a very different thing in my mind, and the kind of discoveries one can make, much like in a dream.

Ladder No. 2

Do you get to the outdoors when not in your studio?
I try and get outdoors as much as possible but the studio can be very greedy.
It has demands that sometimes keep me indoors much longer than I’d like.

Is there a wild area, reserve or beach you would recommend a reader must visit when in your part of the world?
With out hesitation Plumb Island Bird Sanctuary on the north shore. It’s a barrier island surrounded by the ocean and salt marshes and has the distinction of being in the flight path of a multitude of migratory birds. We were lucky enough to see a snowy owl there last winter and that was very surreal.

Find Jeremy’s work here and here and here.

Gabriella Soraci

Twelve months ago I stumbled upon the work of Gabriella Soraci.
Recently I decided to ask the artist about her images, and the story behind one
of her little paintings in particular.

Hi Gabriella, please tell us a bit about yourself and your environment.
I live in Eugene, Oregon, it’s a small town nestled between the Cascade mountain range and the rugged Oregon coastline. The area is known for its easy-going lifestyle. I have lived here most of my life. In addition to my own studio practice
I teach painting and drawing at the University of Oregon and at Lane Community College, both in Eugene. My husband Michael is a building designer and we have
a one-year-old daughter, Francesca.

What about your art background?
It definitely reaches back to early childhood. I was always drawing, and reading.
My sister and I attended a Waldorf school where arts, crafts, and storytelling are incorporated into daily learning in all subjects. Later on in college (Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Oregon, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California at Davis), I approached the study of fine art in a more serious way. I have always been a huge reader, so in college the choice of what to study was between studio arts, and something else like creative writing or English. Ultimately the studio won out. There is just nothing better than the feeling you get when you are deep into the creative process. Time moves differently. Petty concerns vanish. I knew that in the studio I could combine all of my interests and continue learning for the rest of my life.

So what books did you enjoy in childhood?
I was always reading, one book after another. I loved, and still love, the
Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle, and many of her other books.

Painting of My Rainbow Painting (2008)

I love your little canvas, Painting of my Rainbow Painting, it appears to fuse landscape, mindscape and still life. What led you to paint it?
The year before making Painting of my Rainbow Painting, I made a dramatic change in my process, from working abstractly from the imagination to working perceptually with simple still life items. The little watercolor painting seemed like a bridge between the two. I actually love the way you describe it – fusing landscape, mindscape, and still life. I think that is something I strive for and that my most successful paintings accomplish, so thank you! I made another attempt at incorporating the Rainbow Painting two years ago. I placed the watercolor behind a jam jar, partially refracting the image through the glass. I might use it again some day, since its symbolism continues to broaden for me over time.

Jar and Rainbow on Table (2010)

Can you tell us more about the Rainbow watercolor image?
My parents met at a spiritual community called Findhorn in Northern Scotland, where I was born in 1979. A fellow community member was the artist Bob Knox, who would go on to a successful career as an illustrator and painter. The original “Rainbow Painting,” as I call it, is a small watercolor made by Bob and given to my parents as a gift after I was born. I have always had the painting with me, either in my bedroom growing up, or in my studio, and now in my daughter’s bedroom.
That magical little watercolor certainly represents something about my childhood experience, and since it has always been with me, has most likely influenced my artistic sensibility as well. As an adult, I suppose the painting also acts as a symbol, reminding me of the dreams and utopian ideals for the future that my parents, and many of their generation had in the late 1960’s and 70’s. For some, those ideals are still alive and kicking, but there is no doubt that as a culture many of those dreams have not come to pass. In that sense, the painting is bittersweet, a marker of personal and collective history.

Sometimes your subject is a cup or simple box, other times you make
mini-constructions from everyday objects the subject. Books are stacked in a triangle, or a piece of paper is taped to a window, folded maps become little sculptures.
Well, other than the personal relationship with the Rainbow Painting, I mostly use objects that are not sentimental and have come across them somewhere in a different context. I spend a lot of time moving things around, playing with possible combinations, and looking at the resulting arrangement. I’m attracted to simple geometric shapes – squares, circles, and triangles – and find myself building these shapes with different materials.

What is currently inspiring you?
I am focused on my daughter most of the time while continuing to teach, so studio time is limited. When I do get a small chunk of time I am drawing classic subjects like apples and flowers, or the view out my studio windows to get warmed up again. I have made hundreds of drawings over the years in the “down time” between my more intense painting periods. For me painting is a slow craft, but it is one I am prepared to spend a lifetime at.
rs

Gabriella’s website and Etsy store

Folded Map II (2008)

Black Paper in Window (2008)