1
00:00:17,401 --> 00:00:22,195
ELLEN GALLAGHER: This is 
almost done, you can take over.

2
00:00:25,111 --> 00:00:28,937
I think it’s in the work that play with joy.

3
00:00:29,560 --> 00:00:36,000
I think artists know that you can take a kind of,
an advertising sign and make something joyful

4
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:38,640
and um, other with it.

5
00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:40,680
And I think it’s sometimes uh,

6
00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:47,600
hard for people who don’t make things
to understand labor and joy and attention

7
00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:49,050
and uh, whimsy.

8
00:00:51,231 --> 00:00:53,800
I didn’t really come from a fine arts background,

9
00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:56,522
although you know I certainly 
went to museums as a kid.

10
00:00:57,880 --> 00:01:00,498
I came from a carpentry background

11
00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:04,560
and I worked in Seattle 
building a bridge connecting uh,

12
00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:06,920
Mercer Island and Seattle.

13
00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:10,520
It was a floating bridge that 
has since collapsed, but....

14
00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:15,790
So when I went to art school about a year later,

15
00:01:16,280 --> 00:01:17,552
that was what I knew how to do.

16
00:01:19,800 --> 00:01:24,190
And I built a latticework grid and 
stretched the canvas over that.

17
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:28,640
That way I could sit on the canvas as I um,

18
00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:32,042
began gluing sheets of penmanship paper down.

19
00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:52,387
Penmanship paper for me is more about gesture.

20
00:01:55,080 --> 00:01:59,488
It’s not so much about grammar as it 
is about how you make your letters.

21
00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:03,540
So there’s this watery push and pull between the,

22
00:02:03,540 --> 00:02:07,160
the watery blue of the penmanship 
paper lines and then the,

23
00:02:07,650 --> 00:02:10,455
the gestural marks made 
in, inside and around them.

24
00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:16,480
The larger works then are made in a similar way as
the earlier penmanship paper works,

25
00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:20,804
in that they are built from found material.

26
00:02:34,760 --> 00:02:39,960
I’m basically collecting archival material
from the 1930s through the 70s,

27
00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:41,474
these Ebony magazines.

28
00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:44,426
Ebony, Sepia and Our World.

29
00:03:00,160 --> 00:03:03,560
They were kind of manifestos in a way, you know.

30
00:03:03,560 --> 00:03:06,320
And um, but they were magazine,

31
00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:09,520
they still were entertainment and um, but they,

32
00:03:09,520 --> 00:03:14,622
they had a kind of urgency and a 
necessity to them, also a whimsy.

33
00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:26,248
I’m collecting advertisements 
and stories and characters.

34
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:35,440
And I see them as conscripts in the sense that

35
00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:40,086
they come in to my lexicon 
without me asking them permission.

36
00:03:44,160 --> 00:03:47,794
There’s still yet a specificity in each person’s,

37
00:03:48,640 --> 00:03:50,240
I don’t know, the way they hold their body

38
00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:53,701
or some subtle key that says, t
his is who I am at this time.

39
00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:58,160
It seemed to me to be about identity in,

40
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:01,134
in the most open sense of that word.

41
00:04:03,560 --> 00:04:06,439
No matter how uniform or altered,

42
00:04:07,040 --> 00:04:09,429
it just refuses to be stamped out.

43
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:12,440
ou know when you’re reading a magazine or a book

44
00:04:12,440 --> 00:04:13,880
that’s a particular kind of reading.

45
00:04:13,880 --> 00:04:17,084
It’s a kind of sequential, page by page and you,

46
00:04:17,440 --> 00:04:21,480
you know, remember what
you’ve just read five pages ago or you don’t.

47
00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:24,240
And, but it’s, that’s how 
you keep that information.

48
00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:26,520
And the reading of a painting, what I,

49
00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:29,280
what I loved was this idea of opening up the pages

50
00:04:29,280 --> 00:04:34,286
so that your sequence was then more 
spatial rather than sequential.

51
00:04:36,200 --> 00:04:41,052
In the paintings there are 
characters that repeat and recur.

52
00:04:42,098 --> 00:04:43,523
Pegleg is one.

53
00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:46,811
Sometimes there will be a compass next to Pegleg.

54
00:04:48,280 --> 00:04:51,840
Those kind of signs are in the paintings to um,

55
00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:56,291
activate Pegleg as both Ahab and Pegleg Bates.

56
00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:01,040
I’m attracted to the 
visceralness of the body of Ahab,

57
00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:01,984
that wooden leg.

58
00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:05,560
I also like the way in Moby Dick,

59
00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:08,613
you’re so aware of people’s physical presence and,

60
00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:13,160
and the sound that you know this 
idea of these men hearing this

61
00:05:13,160 --> 00:05:16,000
sort of scraping of the wood as, as uh,

62
00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:18,826
Ahab dragged his leg across.

63
00:05:22,833 --> 00:05:27,480
And the paintings for me functioned
as a gate into the watery static realm.

64
00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:29,240
And then that room in the back was

65
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:31,717
another kind of cabinet,
the species cabinet.

66
00:05:33,409 --> 00:05:39,686
That work is work I made as I traveled
either in Cuba or in uh, Senegal.

67
00:05:43,760 --> 00:05:49,808
And in Cuba is where all those colors came from,
the green in particular.

68
00:05:50,520 --> 00:05:51,900
And the red came from this,

69
00:05:51,900 --> 00:05:54,760
this berry that you use to dye meat and rice.

70
00:05:54,760 --> 00:05:57,592
So the kind of coral, red color came from that.

71
00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:15,240
They’re also made by scratching 
directly into the paper

72
00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:17,827
and carving into the paper, much like scrimshaw.

73
00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:28,440
I liked that idea of making 
something so focused in this um,

74
00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:30,000
in my case, in a new environment.

75
00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:32,120
And I think in scrimshaw, it’s interesting to me

76
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:34,120
that you would make something on a,

77
00:06:34,120 --> 00:06:37,360
a bone so like these detailed worlds that,

78
00:06:37,360 --> 00:06:39,200
while you are out in the middle of nowhere,

79
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:41,180
trying to catch this giant monster.

80
00:06:47,080 --> 00:06:52,040
I think there’s a way in which my 
interest in the water and travel

81
00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:56,600
in some specific ways may 
have to do with the idea of

82
00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:00,000
my family arrived here by water.

83
00:07:01,146 --> 00:07:05,913
My father’s family came on 
whaling ships from Cape Verde.

84
00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:09,791
But the Irish came a while ago.

85
00:07:18,360 --> 00:07:23,000
In a way the films do literally what I would hope

86
00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:25,396
people would do with their 
paintings in their mind.

87
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:32,880
The films, they’re also this grid 
and it’s this grid where the, the…

88
00:07:32,880 --> 00:07:37,012
each frame erases the frame 
before it as you move forward.

89
00:07:37,880 --> 00:07:41,400
So it’s, it’s literally a 
projection of a grid in space,

90
00:07:41,400 --> 00:07:44,055
but it’s in the same place over and over again.

91
00:07:45,880 --> 00:07:51,027
The first film in that, in MURMUR 
that I made is water ecstatic,

92
00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:56,960
which is made much like the series 
of drawings, Water Ecstatic,

93
00:07:56,960 --> 00:08:02,609
through thick water color paper, 
cutting into it and drawing over it.

94
00:08:38,040 --> 00:08:48,342
The grid to DELUXE is each individual 
page is its own drama or its own stage.

95
00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:10,905
I wanted to mark him.

96
00:09:16,626 --> 00:09:19,469
But I, I certainly couldn’t 
give Isaac Hayes a wig.

97
00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:25,400
I also didn’t want the tattooing 
to obliterate his face.

98
00:09:28,128 --> 00:09:31,316
And his shoulders just seemed 
to be so beautiful to highlight.

99
00:09:33,408 --> 00:09:36,154
The two marks on the shoulders 
will be printed in black

100
00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:40,480
and the face will be printed 
in a transparent base,

101
00:09:40,480 --> 00:09:44,077
sort of just an embossment over his skin.

102
00:09:56,720 --> 00:10:01,064
Oh wow, so cool.

103
00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:04,150
Can see it from the side.

104
00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:10,920
Love that it’s so beautifully inked that 
the engraving just looks like soft velvet.

105
00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:12,310
It’s beautiful, thank you.

106
00:10:12,310 --> 00:10:13,455
SPEAKER: My pleasure.

107
00:10:16,734 --> 00:10:20,160
GALLAGHER: The necklace, which is 
this sort of magic constellation

108
00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:21,631
traced on the computer

109
00:10:24,391 --> 00:10:29,676
and then a laser cuts all along the tracing lines.

110
00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:44,760
That’s then removed, plucked away from the,

111
00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:47,661
the skin of the paper.

112
00:10:53,280 --> 00:10:58,480
This idea of repetition and revision 
is central to my working process.

113
00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:00,680
You know this idea of stacking and layering

114
00:11:00,680 --> 00:11:04,801
and building up densities and you know recoveries.

115
00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:20,400
He’s been altered in a way that um,

116
00:11:20,400 --> 00:11:24,959
the character that is now 
my conscripted Isaac Hayes

117
00:11:25,582 --> 00:11:27,927
should be altered to be in my lexicon.

118
00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:43,520
I think there is a nostalgia in…

119
00:11:43,520 --> 00:11:47,640
in my uh, gathering of this material and,

120
00:11:47,640 --> 00:11:53,000
and looking at this material 
and trying to hold it still for,

121
00:11:53,000 --> 00:11:55,832
for a moment in these paintings or in the films.

122
00:11:58,080 --> 00:12:00,520
It’s not just a nostalgia in 
terms of looking backwards,

123
00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:02,326
it’s a way of imagining forwards.

124
00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:06,560
As a way of constantly looking for home, you know,

125
00:12:06,560 --> 00:12:08,680
yet your in that gesture you’re,

126
00:12:08,680 --> 00:12:13,005
you’re continually moving forward
and continually seeing the world.