Deep Color

Celia Pym makes textile-based artwork by repairing items like tattered sweaters, worn out socks, or torn paper pastry bags. Celia talks about the exchanges between making functional and non-functional art objects, finding pleasure in the tactility of her materials, different types of art transactions and preferring to return work to their original owners, damage and repair as driving concepts, how portraiture and body can be seen in garments, interacting with stories about grief, being intentional about contrast and “not matching”, repair work as a political act, being suspicious of virtue, how mending can unstick a stuck feeling, and navigating her emotional life through practicalities and making things.

Matt Rich makes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and installations that center themselves around form and shape, color relationships, and different systems for mark making. Matt talks about time as a resource and the safety of a studio space, the importance of procedure in his practice, colliding intentional and accidental gestures, wanting his work to be unpretentious and light, the influences of writing graffiti as a teenager, color as a mess of ever-changing experiences, ampersand symbols as an aesthetic and conceptual muse, and artistic discontent as a way to drive his work into new places.

Ashley Bickerton makes sculpture, assemblages and painting-like objects that reference the grotesqueness of commodification and consumerism. Ashley talks about how a work of art can hold contrasting meanings, avoiding typecasting and being fluid with his artistic language, pacing an art career and gallery relationships as business arrangements--not friendships, operating on the edge of the contemporary art world, how a harmonious homelife allows him to flourish in the studio, being diagnosed with ALS and researching new ways to make art, mortality and the beauty in each day, and preferring ideas and dreams to the crud and muck of our physical word.

Leslie Diuguid is a printmaker and the founder, owner and operator of DuGood Press—the first and only Black Female owned fine-art screen printing business in New York City. Leslie talks about how her family’s history is embedded into her work and outlook, pivoting from printing business cards and apparel to fine-art editions, amplifying an artist’s voice and ideas through printmaking, the process of dissecting images into layers and individual colors, “winging it" and learning on the fly, slow mornings as form of self-care, and the excitement and satisfaction born out of solving complicated printing projects.

Rodrigo Valenzuela makes photographs, video and installation-based works that consider the value of labor, the language of modernist architecture, and the inefficiency of bureaucracy. Rodrigo talks about how ideas are born out of his process and making, poetic formalism as a layer in his work, getting out of his own way and second guessing as a healthy thought exercise, reading as a key part of his practice, and how friendships and support systems can strengthen an artist’s work. This episode was organized, facilitated, and recorded by artist Matt Rich.

Nikita Gale makes sculpture and installation-based work that explores the exchanges and barriers between audience and performer. Nikita talks about how artwork can influence group behavior, protest and dissent as performance, research as a way to pull out ideas, noise and silence as social and political positions, the similarities between studio visits and dating, maintenance and mind-body awareness, and art as an open invitation.

Susan Bee makes energetic oil paintings that feature a mix of female figures in fantastical landscapes, art historical references, geometric abstraction and pictorial invention—all serving as iconic flashpoints for current social and personal struggles. Susan talks about symbolism and being inspired by romance and poetry, inserting herself into someone else’s narrative, how images can represent sound, surrendering meaning and embracing ambiguity, vulnerability during studio visits, the self as primary audience, and feeling completely absorbed by the process of making a painting.

Graham Collins makes sculpture and paintings that often combine complex structures, minimalism and material exploration. Graham talks about his approach to making and how different bodies of work connect and disconnect, thriving off of deadlines, being skeptical of art as a healthy exercise, allowing for fun in studio, small versus big galleries, green smoothies as placebo, how feelings aren’t facts, a desire for meaning to be visible and artist’s as the drivers of culture.