In this interview we spoke to artist Emilio Perez while he was expanding from painting to ceramic sculpture while at Anderson Ranch. We learned about the current state of his work, as well as his upcoming exhibitions and plans, many of which involve returning to Cuba, the country of his families origin, where he will be completing an installation as part of the Havana Biennial.

Emilio Perez

Born 1972, New York. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Rhythm, movement and intuition are in abundance in Emilio Perez’s works, revealing an interest in music, as well as a fascination with the forces of nature. Known as a painter’s painter, combining the inherent aspects of painting with drawing in his unique stylistic process. His work is a combination of the spontaneity and expressiveness of painting (purposefully in its loosest form) and the immediacy and graphic quality of drawing. Energetic and intensely layered, his art is made using a distinctive stylistic process that combines painting, cutting and drawing. The artist generates his kinetic imagery by pushing paint in across a canvas, building layer over layer, and then going back into the painting to “draw” with a blade cutting his marks. Melding foreground and background, Perez’s hand- cut marks ebb and flow between layers like the fluidity of ocean currents.

Perez attended Pratt Institute and University of Florida’s New World School of the Arts. Perez’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the PAMM – Perez Art Museum, Miami; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Fundación ARCO, Madrid and Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; and in corporate collections, internationally. The artist’s paintings were featured in the Critical Gestures, PAMM, Miami; 12th Havana Biennial; Topographies at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. Perez had solo exhibitions with Galerie Lelong in both New York and Paris and has been featured in group exhibitions in Dusseldorf, Philadelphia, Houston and St. Louis, among others.

Instagram: @EmilioPerezArt

Website: emilioperezart.com/

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In this episode we feature visiting artist Katie Stout and her journey into making large scale figurative ceramic lamps. Based on images of the past, Katie creates lamps for the home that challenge past depictions of women in furniture. She spoke to us about the process of making these creations, as well as what lies in the future for her work after visiting the ranch!

Katie Stout: 

One of Katie Stout’s best-known pieces was also one of her earliest—a side table completed during her sophomore year at RISD that resembled cow udders and spurted milk. Stout’s works continue to be known for their offbeat sense of humor and whimsical sensibilities. She once summarized her practice as an attempt to “make things for this dream dwelling I have in my head, a super-saccharine, cartoony life-size dollhouse where I would ideally live.” Rather than favoring a particular medium, Stout works first with an idea—such as objects that look as though they’re on fire—and then sources materials or fabricators. Her recent projects include furniture for Bjarne Melgaard’s 2014 Whitney Biennial installation, and a collaborative series of hand-pinched clay lamps created with Sean Gerstley.

Instagram: @ummmsmile

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Listen to the first episode of Art Talks, a new audio series from Anderson Ranch Arts Center featuring artists, faculty, staff and the Ranch communit. The first episode features charismatic artists William and Steven Ladd: The Ladd Brothers. William and Steven have been collaborating on an international body of work since 2000. With a concentrated—almost obsessive— fascination with materials and process, they have forged the foundation for a rich and productive creative process from their common early childhood memories and a close familial bond. While at the Ranch, we sat down with the Ladds to discuss their current work and installations, as well as past and future projects revolving around Santa Poco, their new Upstate New York wonderland for artistic exploration. While listening, make sure to check out the images below of their current work described in the interview, as well as images from their inspiration at Santa Poco.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1977 and 1978, the brothers and collaborators have developed an expanded practice consisting of text, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance and design. They have combined a range of techniques, forms and practices, forging a unique aesthetic vocabulary. The brothers have had major solo museum shows at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Mingei International Museum, San Diego, Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY, Saint Louis Art Museum, Savannah College of Art and Design Museum and the Miami Dade County Museum of Art + Design.

Website: https://www.stevenandwilliam.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenandwilliam/

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Sunday, June 28, 7:00 PM

GUEST FACULTY LECTURE

Amy Arbus & Josh DeWeese
Phototgraphy/Ceramics
Schermer Meeting Hall
Free. Public Invited.

Amy Arbus
Amy Arbus’ photographs have been published internationally and collected by the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Public Library. Monographs include “The Fourth Wall,” “On the Street 1980 -1990” and “After Images,” which was exhibited in the spring of 2013 at The Griffin Museum. She is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.

Josh DeWeese
Josh DeWeese is a Professor of Ceramics at Montana State University in Bozeman, and former Resident Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MO. Josh has exhibited and taught workshops internationally. His work is included in numerous public and private collections.

Tuesday, June 30, 7:00 PM

GUEST FACULTY LECTURE

David Hilliard & Craig Drennen
Photography, Painting
Schermer Meeting Hall
Free. Public Invited.

David Hilliard
David Hilliard received an M.F.A. from Yale University. He is an Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. David exhibits his photographs nationally and internationally and has won a Fulbright Scholarship and Guggenheim Fellowship.

Craig Drennen
Craig Drennen is represented by Samsøn gallery in Boston, and Saltworks in Atlanta. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and The New York Times. He teaches at Georgia State University, served as dean of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and is on the board of ART PAPERS magazine.

Wednesday, June 24, 12:30 PM

2015 SUMMER SERIES | Featured Artists & Conversations

Hank Willis Thomas
Schermer Meeting Hall
Free. Public Invited.
RSVP Required – 970.923.3181 or andersonranch.org

Explore the work of world-renowned artists and curators. Enjoy stimulating conversations with today’s most influential critics and collectors. Anderson Ranch’s 2015 Summer Series: Featured Artists & Conversations fosters a broader understanding of contemporary art and art making. Presentations are focused on artists’ work and topics relevant to the contemporary art community.

Hank Willis Thomas is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He received a B.F.A. in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University and his M.F.A./M.A. in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts.

EXHIBITION: Be The Lighthouse

Works by Shawn Benton
Patton-Mallot Gallery
Free. Public Invited.
On view until Friday, July 3
Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Shawn Benton (born 1981) is a contemporary artist who paints using acrylic, mixed media and collage on canvas. He is a self-taught artist from Oregon, but now resides and creates in Aspen, Colo. His paintings depict current worldly issues as an alternative to what you may hear on mainstream news. He is represented by Forre Fine Art Gallery in Aspen, Ft. Lauderdale and Vail, as well as the Deborah Colton Gallery in Houston.

Saturday, July 4, 11:00 AM
4TH OF JULY PARADE

Main Street, Aspen, Colo.

Cheer on the children from our “Parade Float Extravaganza” workshop in Aspen’s Old Fashioned 4th of July Parade! All week long young creators will develop a theme for the float, then paint, glue and decorate their masterpiece. The ultra-imaginative float will be revealed at the 4th of July celebration and may just bring back the title of “Best Children’s Float” again this year!

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Chow Mein Man, 2013, 4.88H x 6W x 2.38D in
mixed media. Photo Credit: Don Tuttle

2014 Featured Artists Series
Thursday, August 7, 2014
RON NAGLE

Ron Nagle, 2013
Photo Credit: Whitney Irvin

Ron Nagle was born in San Francisco, California in 1939.  He is an Artist, Musician and Songwriter.  Nagle has been making work and teaching for over fifty years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 35 years teaching at Mills College in Oakland, CA and retired in 2009. Originally, Nagle worked solely with the cup form but over the years he has moved towards making small scale sculpture with an occasional return to the vessel.  Early in his career, Nagle worked closely with Peter Voulkos at the University of California-Berkeley.  He then began exploring the possibilities of low fire ceramics and glazes. Taking a cue from Ken Price’s low fire processes Nagle began working almost exclusively in earthenware. Nagle is represented in many Museum and Private collections around the world and has received many prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, an Academy Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 2011, and most recently was featured at the 2013 Venice Biennial.

Regarding his work Nagle says: “For over fifty years I have been making small objects mostly out of clay, which, in the beginning, had reference to ceramic vessels. Over the years my work has evolved to forms which are less referential to pottery but still maintain much of the idiomatic elements that have been associated with Ceramics. As time has gone by, my interest in merging form and color has led me in a direction where I now think of my objects as 3-D paintings. In addition to my visual artwork, I am also a singer/songwriter, record producer, and a huge fan of Pop music, particularly Rhythm and Blues. As time goes on the differences and similarities of both endeavors seem to feed one-another. The bottom line is; the greatest thrill for me is making stuff, whether it’s visual or musical. If other people like what I do, all the better.”

To register for Thursday’s Featured Artist Series lecture follow this link: https://goo.gl/vM4Uhx  or call 970/923.3181 ext. 227

There is a Ron Nagle artwork in the Anderson Ranch 34th Annual Art Auction, held this Saturday, August 9th. Preview and bid online at Paddle8.com

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another action-packed week at Anderson Ranch arts center!
Our workshops were full of artists of all ages exploring creativity and creation.

This summer’s Conversations Series began with a wonderful talk by Debra and Dennis Scholl, moderated by Dean Sobel, Director of the Clyfford Still Museum.

And, the week’s not over yet – Saturday brings Featured Artist Theaster Gates for an afternoon lecture, and our annual Recognition Dinner gala is Saturday night!

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The Ranch is currently abuzz with a wonderfully happy, enthusiastic and productive group of participants as part of the January Studio Immersive that runs Jan. 3 – Jan 21, 2011.

It really should be no surprise. This eclectic group of artists (35 in total)—which in terms of the program’s official capacity translates as “sold out”—quite literally have the run of the place. As program director Paul Collins puts it, “It’s like they have unlocked the candy store”. Artists gone wild? Artists gone to heaven? Well, actually, yes.

Each participant is provided with a generously-sized studio space which are scattered throughout  all the different programs so there is activity in all areas. This deliberate “spreading out” has resulted in a very organic, interactive and spontaneous cross-pollination across disciplines. Sculptors are experimenting in printmaking. Photographers are experimenting with turning wood. Painters are building in clay, and so forth.

Because the January Studio Immersive is really a hybrid programmatically, as a cross between the Artists’ Residency program (10 weeks in length) and the Summer Workshops (1- and 2-weeks in length), the participants have enormous flexibility and accessibility. With a pre-determined schedule of mini half-day workshops and demonstrations in every area (14 total) participants are given exposure to all media, which includes access to all facilities and studio/technical support from the Ranch’s amazing artistic staff.

Some of the mini-workshops that have been run include: Monoprints, Encaustic Painting, Welding, How to Build Your Own Website, How to Photograph Your Work, Handbuilding in Clay and Intro to Building Stretchers and Frames, among others.

Most of the mini-workshops were pre-determined but as a result of specific interests additional mini-workshops were developed to meet those demands. The program’s greatest strength is its fluidity and cross-disciplinary spirit.

Participants are also encouraged to present, discuss and give and receive critical and technical feedback on their work. Voluntary critiques are programmed as part of the program in which nearly every artist elected to participate. This week, Visiting Critic David Humphrey visited each studio to meet the artists and discuss their work. Sculptor Charles Long will also be at the Ranch next week as a Visiting Critic. Critical discourse is an important aspect of the program as demonstrated from the get-go when all participants displayed and discussed their work in a group slide talk on day two of the program.

The participants are a diverse group ranging from an 18 yr-old high school student focused in Photo/Digital as she prepares for college to artists in or preparing for graduate school to established, practicing artists. For about half the students this is their first time to the Ranch as students/program participants—which says something about the strong allure of this unique program.  For many, the draw was discovering a program with its uncommon length, its interactive and cross-disciplinary character and its deep support in regards to staff and technical facilities. The refrain heard again and again in the studios is, “I’ve been looking for a program like this for a long time. This is perfect to work in one program and to move into other areas to explore”.

Gauging from the off-the-charts enthusiasm, high spirits and productivity levels, the participants are most definitely enjoying the “unlocked candy store” which is the Ranch in January.

For more on the January Studio Immersive program visit our website at: andersonranch.org

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The Ranch is excited to welcome internationally reknown artist Polly Apfelbaum as visiting critic to our Residency Program. 

Polly Apfelbaum has been showing consistently in New York and abroad since her first one-person show in New York 1986. A major mid-career survey of her work opened in 2003 at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

Polly’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of Art of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas. The artist has received important grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Richard Diebenkorn Fellowship; a Joan Mitchell Fellowship; an Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts; an Anonymous Was a Women Award and a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant.

For more information about Polly and her work visit her website, pollyapfelbaum.com.

Polly will give a public lecture at 7pm on Tuesday, March 17 in Schermer Hall.

Polly and artist-in-residence, Kaveri Nair, taking in the local vibe at the Woody Creek Tavern.

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