On Tuesday May 9, 201&, Joseph Gallivan interviews photographer Susan Seubert and book artist James Allen.
Seubert will talk about her photography show about suicide called Not a Day Goes By, a series of portraits of people posing as though they are suffocating in plastic. Allen talks about his method of carving with a scalpel into old books, in this case to reveal something of the history of the Pacific Northwest.
This show was recorded at KBOO on May 6, 2017 in the Studio1.
From the press releases:
Susan Seubert
In addition to her solo show at our Portland gallery, Froelick Gallery is very proud to announce that the Global Art Affairs Foundation has selected Portland photographer Susan Seubert for inclusion in “Personal Structures”, an exhibition on view at Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy, during this year's Venice Biennale, May 13 – November 26, 2017.
At both venues, Seubert will exhibit a recent body of work titled Not a Day Goes By. These photographic prints on metal surfaces meditate on a highly prevalent means of suicide in theUnited States: Self-asphyxiation using a plastic bag. All the more harrowing for their ordinariness and ready availability, Seubert placed plastic over the heads of her models (whom she crowdsourced via social media) and relied on each individual's instinctual posture to convey a face-on personal aspect to broader, tragic statistics. The results are ghostly, simply composed, eerily beautiful in their veiled view of the people underneath whose features are blurred, creased,partially obscured by the folds and light-glancing planes of the bag. Printed on reflective metal panels, Seubert invites the viewer to consider, through glimpses of their own face in the picture, our common humanness. She also draws parallels between these individual tragedies and the role of plastic in environmental ruination – the great Pacific Garbage Patch and other examples remind us that the Earth, in a very real way, is suffocating in plastic. In addition, small, wax-coated photographs titled Manner of show, in soft tones, other methods of suicide- a bullet, a bridge, a pile of pills. Seubert confronts these challenging themes with artistry and deep empathy.
http://www.froelickgallery.com/Exhibit_Detail.cfm?ShowsID=284
James Allen
James Allen was born in 1977 in Illinois. He earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 2000. Currently he lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Allen's artwork is included in Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed published by Chronicle books. His work was exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum in The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book in 2009. His Book Excavations can be found in Public collections at UCLA, Johns Hopkins University, Ringling College of Art and Design, University of Puget Sound, University of Colorado Boulder, Baylor University, and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He's also exhibited across the country in New York, Seattle, Chicago, Milwaukee, Portland, Miami, and San Francisco.
http://www.russoleegallery.com/exhibitions/james-allen2
Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently the Business Reporter. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com
- KBOO