Within these dancing forms, a story unfolds: Informed by the life and experiences of her ancestor, Cynthia Ann Parker, Salazar explores and exposes a story that has been forgotten over time.

You can see Salazar’s work in Vol. 8 of Newfound Journal here.

In her conversation with Newfound, Salazar shares the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, her work with paper as an art form and her newest work:

Courtney Simchak: The work you’ve been showcasing this year has roots in your family history. Can you tell us more about how your family history has inspired your work?

Samantha Parker Salazar: I am incredibly intrigued by the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, an ancestor shrouded in mystery and controversy. My interest in her story was prompted by the lack of a written account of her life, leaving a multitude of possibilities regarding her character and intentions. On the one hand, she was held captive by the Comanche who raided her family’s land, but on the other hand she married the tribe’s chieftain, Peta Nocona, with whom she also had several children.

Cynthia Ann was captured around the age of 10 and by the time she was discovered by Texas Rangers she had completely abandoned Western language and customs to live as the Comanche did. A portion of her contemporaries viewed her with pity while the others assumed she was a deserter, a harlot. Time has washed away the significance of her story; today, her only relevant contribution to American history was giving birth to the last Comanche Chief, Quanah Parker.

My recent work is a visual exploration of each facet of her life and personality. I am not looking to tie up her story with a neat bow, but see myself shaking the dust off a piece of forgotten American history that I feel is especially pertinent to women.

Simchak: What do you enjoy most about working in paper and sculpture? Do you find it easier to work in three-dimensions? Why work with paper?

Salazar: I enjoy the challenge of making a material do what it’s not meant to do. Paper has this amazing ability to be malleable yet it is rigid enough to hold a form. The unexpected act of taking using it for sculpture has me excited about the process.

Paper is also a metaphor for skin, perceived fragility, basic human material. When I cut into it repeatedly with a scalpel it feels like I am performing a surgery or an ancient ritual. The paper just feels so simple and familiar to the touch—anyone can relate to it as a material.

Simchak: I think that is what makes your work so moving—it’s simple, yet complex. Delicate and strong. All of the contradictions found in seeing an everyday material contorted in new and unsuspecting ways. Do you think you’ll ever work away from paper? Or do you think it will be a lifelong interest?

Salazar: I suspect paper will stay with me from beginning to end. It started with paper—from my childhood fascination with the papery seeds that fall from maple trees to summers spent drawing in my grandparents’ greenhouse. In high school, I was primarily interested in drawing and took a drawing/printmaking course at when I was 16. That was when I was first introduced to the supple, smooth material that comprises fine art printmaking papers.

Through college, I drifted back and forth between works on paper and sculpture, never really reconciling the two. It wasn’t until the end of graduate school that I realized I could make sculptures out of paper—that the two ways of working with materials could become one. Paper became the perfect material to use for sculpture: I found it was lightweight and portable, would yield easily to physical manipulation yet strong enough to hold a form, and it was a material that was distinctly human.

Simchak: Lighting seems like a very important aspect of your work, in the way it plays up or down the contrast, the interpreted weight of your materials and color. Do you work with the galleries or do you have complete control over the lighting with your work?

Salazar: Light is always important and I appreciate when that aspect is not overlooked by the viewer. Sometimes lighting the piece can be the hardest part of install and is typically a collaborative step between me and the gallery.

Generally, I prefer to take down most of the lights before installation begins, adding some back in as the sculpture grows within the space. At the end of install all the lights are adjusted to illuminate particular areas in the composition, much like creating a drawing or painting except it is happening within our three-dimensional world. It is always challenging to adjust lights at the end because you have to deal with this large physical obstruction of paper and monofilament, especially when lighting work from behind or within the piece.

Simchak:  Can you talk about why you to turn away from colorful sculptures to the stark weight of the black and white paper? I am thinking of the pieces in “Wakeby Night” and “Iceberg.” Do they all belong to the same narrative or do they work in and from different avenues?

Salazar: It may seem that way, but I wouldn’t say that I have turned away from color. In 2016 when I made those sculptures I was just getting used to the move from one studio to another. The first studio had an amazing print shop where it was easy for me to run color flats on paper components. Without having the advantages of printmaking, I have had to find new ways to add color into my work. I exercised this practice of painting and collaging found imagery onto paper by focusing on 2-D work in 2017. By coming back to a traditional way of working with paper, I was able to focus on new methods of applying color to the page.

Currently “Iceberg” is in the phase of becoming a new piece, “Arctic Turbulence,” for ArtPrize. It will include much of the original white forms with a gradual transition to a deep, royal blue. Simultaneously, I am working on another installation that delves into the intricacies of color. That piece will debut in 2018.

Simchak:  How did you get started in art and installation? Have you always been interested?

Salazar: Learning printmaking was a big push toward installation art because of the ability to make multiples. The quickness of making monotypes lended itself very well to making large scale works. Tired of my lack of direction in graduate school and feeling unchallenged by my then-current work, I made the very first cut into a stack of prints that had been sitting in flat files for several years.

Simchak: What is one of the most challenging things you face as a contemporary artist? One of the most rewarding?

Salazar: I think it is both challenging and rewarding to navigate the financial aspect of being an artist. This isn’t something that’s talked about often enough in the art world. Working as a full-time artist, you have to learn how to market yourself, brand yourself, and decide who your audience is while at the same time trying carefully not to give the (taboo) appearance of being a sell-out. The fact is, if an artist is to make a living by their work, they need to get paid. Once you find your niche and client base, however, it is very rewarding. I could not think of a dream greater than supporting yourself and your family by doing what you love.

Samantha Parker Salazar creates site-specific paper installations and mixed media works on paper. She received an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014 and a BFA from Bradley University in 2011. Salazar is based in Columbus, Ohio, and is currently a Studio Instructor at the Dayton Art Institute.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016 and has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014.

The post Carnage Garden: A Conversation with Samantha Parker Salazar appeared first on Newfound.

Johnson delivers lightly removed yet confident gestures, made by a sensitive and observant hand. This deliberate mark-making still contains poetry. In “Field Notes,” Johnson creates beautiful landscapes with her obsessively meditated drawing and in her most recent series, “Notes For An Emergency,” Johnson uses vintage ephemera and photography to collage work that expresses not only an analytical eye, but a deep empathy and exploration as well. Bethany Johnson talks with Newfound about the thought process behind her art practice, how she became an artist and what inspires her.

Courtney Simchak: There is a deliberate, qualitative element to all of your work—most recently the ink drawings from your series, “Field Notes.” Have you always been drawn to science and qualitative processes?

Bethany Johnson: Yes, absolutely. I’ve always been interested in learning about the world, and examining how we know things to begin with. Humphry Davy, an early 19th century chemist and inventor, is one of many to speak on the relationship between the arts and sciences. His words have stuck with me throughout the years:

“The genius of Newton, of Shakespeare, of Michel Angelo, and of Handel, are not very remote from each other. Imagination, as well as the reason, is necessary to perfection in the philosophic mind. A rapidity of combination, a power of perceiving analogies, and of comparing them by facts, is the creative source of discovery. Discrimination and delicacy of sensation, so important in physical research, are other words for taste; and love of nature is the same passion, as the love of the magnificent, the sublime, and the beautiful.”

Simchak: Do you design your methods of mark-making ahead of time or is it a series of slow but spontaneous experiments? Perhaps a combination of both?

Johnson: The “Field Notes” drawings are quite calculated. They are all rendered from one or multiple source images, so while these works entail small-scale decision-making as the images are translated into this new set of marks, the overall compositional decisions have been made in advance. This linear, methodical process references a scientific exactitude, while the hand-drawn process lends the works a more human, emotive, meditative quality.

My more recent collages (“Notes for An Emergency”), on the other hand, require much more spontaneity and active decision-making, as I am working to compose existing units of imagery and text into a composite image.

When I walk into the studio, the decision of what to work on is somewhat determined by whether I am more inclined toward the meditation of a pre-calculated drawing, or the mental exercise and visual puzzle of the collage process.

Simchak: How did you come to be an artist? Was it a decision or something inevitable?

Johnson: It was very much a decision. I had (and still have) many varying interests, which made choosing an academic and professional direction difficult. Interestingly, though, I think it is precisely this quandary that led me to art making as the best possible outcome. As an artist, I have the freedom to explore these interests in the most open-ended, interdisciplinary, and expansive way.

While I at first worried that becoming an artist “wasted” other academic inclinations of mine, I came to appreciate art-making as an intellectually stimulating and creatively satisfying way to holistically bring these interests together. I feel like I’ve gotten away with doing everything, in a way.

Simchak:  In “Notes for An Emergency” you take your qualitative mark-making and add the expressive influence of collage and hand-rendered images information. The result is still in the conversation with your more abstract work, but also seems more intimate in tone and meaning. There is a balance made between information and emotion—both a sense of order and a sense of disconnect. The information is there, but it’s jumbled, rearranged. Can you talk more about what started this series and what your thought process was while working on these pieces?

Johnson: The collages are relatively new for me, and emerged as a way to shake up my studio habits a bit. It was also inspired by the fact that, in the making of my work up until this point, I had gathered a great deal of interesting source materials and paper ephemera that reflect my visual and conceptual interests. It seemed about time that these materials themselves be explored as components of finished pieces.

One of the side effects of these materials sitting around for a various lengths of time is that a lot of the papers have yellowed to different degrees. The subtly varying whites, tans, and yellows of the papers offer formal color undulations, while also conceptually referencing the passage of time. The intimacy you are referencing may be due to the warmth of these papers, along with the glimpses of text that offer a little conceptual context.

Many of the collaged components contain images of nature, and of our human-made systems for measuring and understanding nature. There is a bit of melancholy and anxiety in these pieces too; a sense of a disappearance or burying, weather looming, horizons turned sideways.

I think these pieces more viscerally present some of my more personal fears about environmental degradation, fragmentation, and climate change. There’s an ominousness contained in the collaged phrase in one of the works: THE WAY WE LIVE NOW. I think in one way or another, we are all grappling with hope and anxiety, beauty and fear.

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Bethany Johnson received her MFA from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2011. She currently teaches at the University of Texas, Austin, in the Department of Art and Art history.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post Notes for An Emergency: A Conversation with Bethany Johnson appeared first on Newfound.

The series was inspired by a book discovered in a used bookstore, which generated a personal photographic inquiry into the world of UFO documentation. Her work is as serious as it is playful, found in both the lightheartedness of subject matter and in the thoughtfulness of her photo compositions. Marino’s work was recently featured in Newfound Journal’s Other Worlds Issue this spring, Art Palace in Houston and greyDUCK gallery in Austin. In Marino’s discussion with Newfound, she shares her work influences, how the series started, what she loves about photography and her standing on extraterrestrial life.

Courtney Simchak: What or who inspires and informs your work?

Rebecca Marino: A lot of books. I definitely consider myself a research-based artist and I do a lot of digging around before I start making things. The digging often starts in books– Mostly science fiction and science non-fiction books. I really enjoy Carl Sagan’s work and I’d say that he informs my work more than anyone.

Simchak: In your series, The Best Evidence Available, you mention that the project was inspired by a found document. Where and how did you come across this document and what was it, exactly?

Marino: I found the actual book “The Best Available Evidence” at a Half Price Books. It’s really old and worn and it felt a lot more like a lost archive or document than a run-of-the-mill paperback. It consists of witness accounts, photographs, diagrams, histories–all “evidence” that was essentially pulled together to prove the existence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Simchak: Did your series turn out how you had planned or did it develop differently over time? How do you prepare to make work?

Marino: I usually prepare by doing a lot of research beforehand. For me, ideas usually come from information. There’s never really a set overall plan. I think that’s probably a really disappointing way to try and make work, because you never know what new ideas will spring out of others as you go. You have to leave room for growth and change or I would imagine you’d get really bored. Every series I’ve worked on develops differently over the course of time. Sometimes it even changes as I’m installing it in a space.

People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me. – Rebecca Marino

Simchak: There is a humor in your work as well as a serious inquiry into the parts and boundaries of belief systems. Can you talk more about that?

Marino: I think a good sense of humor is really important. Without it, I’m not sure how much interest I’d have in making art. Humor is also a nice access point for people, which I think has worked pretty well for me thus far.

But yes, I’m definitely asking some more serious questions too, specifically concerning belief in The Best Available Evidence. With that project, I think using the subject matter of UFO sightings is a somewhat comical way to bring people in, but then to ask these more reflective questions–what do you require to believe in something? Is this photograph believable? Or do you just want to believe? People are always trying to fill the void with something that’s bigger than themselves and the extent or potential for what that could be is really interesting to me.

Simchak: What is it that you love most about astronomy and physics?

Marino: Astronomy was a real game changer for me in my practice. I took an astronomy class in school and it started really changing the way I saw things. I’d see a dried up pond on the side of the road and think it was a crater. Everything just becomes bigger and more important and more amazing. It’s a child-like, almost naïve way of looking at the world, but it makes things as intriguing as they probably should be. I love astronomy (and science in general) for taking the very mundane aspects of everyday life and expanding upon them in a bigger cosmic perspective kind of way.

Simchak: Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life?

Marino: Oh most definitely. This conversation is always really funny to me. There are over 500 solar systems out there (that we know of) and still counting. It’s ridiculous to me that people would think there isn’t life out there.

Simchak: Why work in photography instead of another medium? How did you get started in photography?

Marino: I started getting into photography in high school. The honest truth is that we could take a course at an elective campus that focused on career training (including, but not limited to cosmetology, hotel management and culinary arts) and if you took a class there, you didn’t have to take gym. So I took commercial photography to get out of a gym class. Hilarious, but I totally fell in love with it and decided that was what I wanted to go to college for. I work primarily in photography because I enjoy it. However, a lot of my photographs are quite sculptural and as you can see The Best Available Evidence actually incorporates a lot of sculpture, installation, and even an audio piece.

Simchak: Due to the documentary nature of photography, many photographers use the medium to prove or attempt to prove science and folklore. Elsie Wright’s Cottingley Fairy photographs, which featured paper figures but were touted as proof of the existence of fairies, come to mind. Do you think, in an age of fake news and overly-doctored images, that we still are exploring the boundaries between reality and fantasy?

Marino: Photography is a really interesting medium because a lot of baggage comes with it. It’s used as a tool to document as well as a tool to create art, and that line between fine art photography and photojournalism is a precarious and blurry one. I like messing around with that line and playing with the connotations people have (or the side of the line they’re usually on) when they look at a photograph.

I think we’ve always been grappling with what’s real in a photograph. What’s pretty amusing to me are the vulnerabilities that photography inherently has (as opposed to overly doctored or Photoshopped photographs) which people often overlook. We’ve always been able to manipulate a photograph with things like exposure and framing. All photographs are constructions, really.

The fairy photographs crack me up–I’ve always loved that story and actually thought about it a lot when I made those UFO photos. I feel like this is where you really let go as the photographer. It’s way less about the person presenting the images (I mean, in the case of the fairies, it was children) and so much more about the people who are looking at them and judging what they are. It’s a way to measure the cynicism (or hope) people. That push and pull is fascinating. And yes, I think we’ll always be exploring that. Who wants to see the fairies and aliens? I mean, who doesn’t, really? But who can actually convince themselves something is there, right?

Rebecca Marino is an Austin-based visual artist whose work focuses on cosmic perspective. Her work has been featured in TX National, grayDUCK Gallery, Art Palace Gallery, and by the Humble Arts Foundation. She currently serves as the co-director and curator for Pump Project and is co-editor and co-founder of Conflict of Interest.

Courtney Simchak lives in Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post The Best Available Evidence: A Conversation with Rebecca Marino appeared first on Newfound.

Each painting is a hand-printed photograph, screen printed with multiple layers of resin, ink and other materials, and then stretched around a round frame. These geographical studies take on an informative and thoughtful look into what marks we make as a species. In a recent discussion with Newfound, David shares his thoughts on his work, his artistic process and what influences him. You can see more of O’Brien’s work on his website.

Courtney Simchak: How did your Disc paintings get started? What was your inspiration for the series?

David O’Brien: The disc paintings began when I started getting serious about photographing the ground. They are a way to map and document the landscape from my own perspective. Each title is a set of GPS coordinates, accurate within a few feet of the photo.

If you look down at the ground in any given place, away from pavement, you’ll most likely find some mixture of grass, plants, earth and trash. No matter how far out in the woods you go you can still probably sift the dirt and find some bits of paper, or a little shred of plastic nearby. I’ve always been interested in watching buildings and machines decay and thinking about the lifespan of materials. Organic things regenerate so quickly and synthetic things often age incredibly slowly. So these little bits of trash are fascinating to me, just as much as the ruins of some great building. They are cultural and technological artifacts, markers that we’ve been here, destroyers at the chemical level.

Simchak: I feel like that is the danger in our capabilities as humans—the willingness to acknowledge the beauty of something, while also being able to recognize the power of its influence and, in this case, destruction: your work is beautiful, even with the message of sadness, astonishment. It has both the insight of poetry and the remoteness of observational notes. Would you consider these disc paintings as a series of rumination? Do you feel your work is as much scientific documentation as much as it is art?

O’Brien: Oh I don’t think that’s a danger at all. Being able to see both sides (or for that matter, many sides) of any human endeavor, in this case material waste and excess, is a positive thing. You have to strain to see all sides of an issue and spend time reflecting on them. Only then can you really act with intention.

You could call it a rumination or documentation, but I definitely would not call it science. It’s certainly guided by scientific though but the work itself isn’t a science project, it’s an art project. It asks different kinds of questions.

Simchak: You implement screen printing– a rather elaborate layering system of different mediums and inks– to print your photographs. How did this decision come about?

O’Brien: The process of getting photographs printed, mounted and framed was never fulfilling for me personally. It’s just too detached for me, too robotic, no offense to robots or print labs or photographers. I love photography but I wanted to find a way around it. I had gotten too deep into computers, I needed something hands-on, something where I could manipulate pigment directly, away from the filter of the computer, and yet still retain a connection to what’s essential about photography. Screen printing just fit. Of course I am still trying to find a way to make it my own, to take the medium in a different direction somehow. It’s a process.

Simchak: What do you find most satisfying and most frustrating about the screen printing process?

O’Brien: What is both frustrating and satisfying are the mistakes that can still happen, no matter how scientific the process. Serendipity is a big element in screen printing. There is always a moment of surprise when you lift a screen up. You never get two pieces exactly the same.
I’m also drawn to the fact that there is real physicality to the process. In the end you’re laying down acrylic paint on a wood panel. It takes some strength and focus to make each layer of a painting and I like that about it. The screens are big heavy objects that get thrown around, and the kind of pressure you apply when printing makes a real difference.

Simchak: I feel like your gravitation to the circular shape, versus the standard rectangular/square format amplifies that pull away from the daily digital influence of how we see images. The circle seems so anti-digital. So that kind of “worldly” shape combined with the tactile nature of ink and resin, really brings out the elemental aspects of your work. Your work in installation also seems to bring your work and experiences into a physical reality. Do you think this real-world element is why so many artists work in installation form, nowadays? Do you think you might work more with installations in the future?

O’Brien: Thank you. Yes and yes definitely.

Simchak: Time is very important to your work: the time the natural space takes to decompose (or not), the time it takes to photograph and the time it takes to impose the image onto the canvas during the printing process. Can you talk more about how this informs your work?

O’Brien: For me, nothing has ever come easy. I always feel like I have to work ten times harder and it’s still not enough. Probably for this reason I tend to appreciate work that is thoughtfully crafted, patient, and slow to unfold. I envy artists who can make things quickly and it works, I’ve just never been like that.

Time is invisible and unstoppable and it etches an impression on everything. For whatever reason I’m drawn to the impression time makes on materials, regardless of their origin, natural or otherwise. So I make paintings about everyday ruins. I study that process of decay and rebirth and attempt to gain some insight from it. Many of the places I’ve found are illegal dumping sites out in the desert, or houses left to cave in on themselves. Many are utterly unremarkable patches of land no one gives a thought to.

It’s possible that one day a landfill will be as valuable as a gold mine, if we ever learn how to harvest the embodied energy in all the things we’ve throw away. I feel there is some great opportunity there yet undiscovered. That’s what makes it poetic for me, matter is always changing in time and its value is always changing. Something new is always coming.

David O’Brien currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berlin, and Santa Fe, as well as numerous group shows. His current practice makes use of video, photography, painting, and printmaking. David travels extensively and primarily documents found natural phenomena in unexpected ways. His work questions traditional views of waste, nature, human intervention in the landscape, and the passage of time.

Courtney Simchak was born in Albuquerque, NM and raised in Central Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Texas State University in 2016. She has been the Visual Arts Editor for Newfound since 2014 and has an artistic background in drawing, printmaking and photography. Her work has shown in Austin and San Marcos.

The post In The Garden of Externalities: A Conversation with David O’Brien appeared first on Newfound.