­­­­­­Conversation with Omar Ávalos

Omar Ávalos is a lifelong resident of Santa Ana who has witnessed the flourishing of the Artist Village since its conception. The village itself, as well as his musical background and studies have inspired him to form the Institute for Mexican Art Music, who in collaboration with MC Gallery recently hosted Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, sculptor Felipe Castañeda, and Chicano painter and muralist Sergio O’Cádiz.

Artists Village Blog: So you’re a musician, you’ve been involved with the Artists Village for a while, can you tell me about that?

Omar Ávalos: I started coming around in 97, 98 during Neutral Grounds, that later became Maury’s Deli, then Pangea, and now Lola Gaspar. I came to participate. I was an artist, a musician, and I wanted a place to perform and hang out. I was told that there was this upcoming Artists Village so I started coming, looking around and I found Maury’s. I started coming every week, every Thursday for open mic. I was here before the Gypsy Den, before Memphis, before all these other things but grew attached to it and have been coming back ever since. I found a place to headquarter my projects in the Santora.

AVB: What current projects are you working on? 

OA: I have a number of projects. One of them is a Flamenco series performance project that I call Flamenco de La Santora. Another is a musicological project that I call The Institute for Mexican Art Music. There’s a bit more to that, how that came about, it was a long process but it has a lot to do with the Downtown also. It was born of the Downtown, that and my time at Cal State Fullerton, that all gave birth to this project. It takes from both sides, Cal State Fullerton and the Downtown itself, it happened to be born of the environment. It’s very much grassroots and “of” the area. The reason for it being of the Downtown is that I bought my first recording of Mexican art music at a record shop called Samara Musical, which is no longer in business. Samara was located on 1st & Broadway and the name of the album was Nacionalismo Musical Mexicano. I discovered the music of Silvestre Revueltas in that recording and that changed my life for good.

AVB: Tell me about the mixer recently hosted at MC Gallery 

OA: I had the great, great opportunity and privilege to present world-renowned Mexican composer Arturo Márquez to the Santa Ana community thanks to Jorge Márquez, his brother who lived for a time in the apartments across the Santora, and to Joseph Hawa who told me about Jorge, and to Moisés Camacho who hosted an informal gathering for Arturo last year at the Santora. It was then that I got a chance to meet Arturo and he inquired about my projects and offered to help. This year we presented a panel discussion with him, Pilar O’Cádiz and Felipe Castañeda as part of an event we called, “A Mixer with the Masters.” I asked Arturo and Felipe about their views on abstract and concrete art and nationalist and universal art. The interview with Arturo and Felipe is posted at www.mexicanartmusic.org.

 (left to right: Felipe Castañeda, Pilar O’Cádiz, Arturo Márquez, Omar Ávalos)

AVB: You are a Flamenco musician, can you tell me about the culture and what attracted you to play this style of music?

OA: Flamenco first and foremost comes from the Andalusian gypsies in Southern Spain. These have been historically a marginalized people that passed on this music and dance tradition through family ties. It is a communal art in its purest form and it is best represented as such, a communal art. It is not the politics of show business and or glamour that it has turned out to be here in the LA region. There need to be more communities or support groups around the Flamenco arts here in this region because it is originally a communal art and cultural practice.

I got into playing Flamenco guitar just out of an interest in guitar. I played blues and jazz before that and got into it to venture out, to expand and try different styles of music. I started doing that and studying that back when I was 17. I took methods and was self taught for a while, I took from some LA-based flamenco guitarists and people that came from Spain during the New World Flamenco Festival at UCI, Jesús Torres and “Canito,” and then I went to Seville, Spain to study at the Taller Flamenco with Lito Espinosa.

AVB: So you’re working on a thesis now, what sort of researching are you conducting?

OA: I’m working towards building an anthology of Nineteenth-Century Mexican guitar music.  That was my advisor’s suggestion, Dr. John Koegel at Cal State Fullerton who is just an amazing musicologist and is published in scholarly music journals in the United States, Mexico, Spain and England. I mention Cal State Fullerton and how that school is also pushing and giving an impetus for these projects to come out because of the academic setting and climate there that allows for someone like me to develop and professionalize a project like my Institute for Mexican Art Music. The content of my thesis is evidence of that.

AVB: You also offer music classes and teach, correct?

OA: Yes, I work for the Music Department at Santa Ana College, I’ve been there for ten years and I’ve been with the Department of Dance at UCI for about ten years on and off. I also I offer music classes privately at the Santora.

AVB: I know you like to keep up with what goes on with the downtown, you’ve got a blog, the Santa Ana Sentinel, can you tell me about that? 

OA: It’s an observer, it was conceived of as a political observer during the election year just out of concern and a need to comment. I’ve been inclined towards politics for a long time and I was originally going to major in Political Science… but I’ve been observing the local politics for a long time and I just have a concern and want to opine about matters. It’s gone beyond that category and I now write about arts & culture in the Downtown, the art walks, transit, Ward 5, which is where I’m from and more.

AVB: Any views you’d like to share about the Downtown?

OA: Just what I’ve said before in my Sentinel. I think that the Downtown could use some grassroots businesses, more local people getting involved. I’d like to see that, and that’s something I’ve been saying for a long time. I want to see the Downtown evolve and improve. I look back ten years and how it was back then, I look at it now and it still has a ways to go. It was very obvious that the Downtown needed improvement back then and it’s still very obvious that it needs improvement.

AVB: What do you think about all the changes that are taking place?

OA: They are improvements, they are positive changes and we need more of that. I do have to say that the local people, those that are concerned or worried about changes, are the ones that have to set up shop and adopt and fuse new business practices into whatever business it is that they offer. There does have to be adaptation and transition into a new era while holding onto ethnic roots if one so chooses because that is a person’s right. It’s up to them to exercise those rights. 

 The Institute for Mexican Art Music is located at:

207 N. Broadway, Suite B in Downtown Santa Ana 

Omar Ávalos music samples can be found at:  

soundcloud.com/flamencali

youtube.com/flamencali

The Santa Ana Sentinel : www.santa-ana-sentinel.com

— AVB / conversationsavb@gmail.com

Conversation with Joni Renee

Artists Village Blog: What keeps you coming back to perform at the Gypsy Den?

Joni Renee: The community is really supportive. They’re interested and they’ll ask questions, you know, “what is that song about?”, and “who did you write that for?” They’re engaged, whereas many other venues—I’ve played at other open mics all over Orange County and they’re not as supportive. Sometimes you get the feeling that the people who attend are there just to eat food and be entertained; they’re on this receiving flow of “entertain us”. Here it’s much more “call and answer”. As an artist I get a huge response from the audience; they’re engaged, they want to be there, they’re actively listening. We make amazing connections too. I met some of my best friends at the Gypsy Den.

AVB: Not only are you a musician, but you’re also a talented songwriter. What is the intent with your music, what is your music about?

JR: As far as my intent, I’m always kind of on the fence about that. I don’t know if I’m trying to “make it” because I don’t want to be one of those people who always has to promote themselves. There are ways to do it, there are ways to play the game and ways to “get famous”. A lot of it is self-sacrificing. You have to be willing to constantly be blogging and tweeting, texting people, “come to my show, come to my show”. I hate begging people to do things. It degrades one’s art. So I’m kind of on the fence about if I’m gonna pursue that or not, but either way, the message is still the same. My music is about life and many different angles on love. I write about honesty and bravery and some of my more unique perspectives.

AVB: You’re good at promoting different kinds of events, your own events and other people’s events.

JR: Yeah, that’s fun! I would like to do that for a living. If I never make it big with my art, I would love to be an event planner.

AVB: Tell me about some of the shows you’ve put together recently. Any upcoming shows you’d like to share?

JR: We have some great ones coming up. One of the most exciting events is on the 19th of February at my gallery. It’s right next to Valentines Day, so I was thinking about making the theme “love”. I don’t want people to think I’m fluffy, so I changed it to more brutal, heart-wrenching viewpoint. I named it “Barbecue My Heart”, and we’re going to feature paintings on the theme of love as well as barbecue real (non-human) hearts. I have a ton of artists who are contributing, and they’re all contributing only one piece, which I feel is the best way because you only get one chance to make a statement. I try to pick a charity that seems appropriate so this month all donations go towards research for children’s heart disease.

The most recent show was also a gallery show and a fundraiser. It was the third Saturday of January. We raised money for human rights awareness and had a great time.

AVB: You had a solo show here in the Santora a few months back, you had your art, and you performed as well…

JR: That was really cool, it was really exciting. It turned out to be kind of a big deal, and I guess when we first started planning it I didn’t think that many people would come. I was talking to some of the gallery owners and they wanted to do a joint feature kind of thing where they all featured different paintings of mine. The problem was that in looking at my work and trying to find a central unifying theme, we got lost. My paintings don’t have one theme, they’re all over the map and I haven’t found my particular style or voice so it can appear scattered and random at times. We eventually had an idea to use that to our advantage. Instead of trying to create “The Blue Period” or something, we thought, “What if we just bring it ALL?” I do want my work to be representative of myself and I do have many different ideas, intense ideas that can seem to go off in every direction at once. We decided to showcase that exact concept and hope that people would take from it what they would. We went down to my house and took maybe 200 canvases and just hung ALL of them. So that wall was packed (at MC Gallery) and same here (at Giamour Gallery). I also created a community art project with paints, pens, markers, and crayons where everyone could contribute. Moises, my mentor, pushed me to perform my music at the event as well, which I ended up doing. It was a great success.

AVB: Can you talk a bit about the Pacific Symphony piano you painted for the Artists Village?

JR: I love it! When I first heard about the project I was like, “Meeeee! Pick me, pick me…I hope they pick me”; I was such a nerd about it. I emailed Kelly, the director, and I sent her this loooong email…“I would just LOVE to be included in this project, blah blah blah, here’s all the reasons why…” The real thrill of the project hit me when I first entered the Pacific Symphony warehouse (where the piano was painted). It had about 10,000 music stands and 10,000 copies of Beethoven sheet music. You just walk through the door and are overwhelmed by the collection of pianos. I have a vivid memory of walking through the door and seeing all of these pianos with all of these artists in front of each one. They were so “in the zone”. I love when people are “in the zone”, living out their passion and being competent. Everyone was so focused; it was truly a joy. To be honest, I felt like most of them were more qualified than me, artistically. I arrived and just kinda sidled around and said, “Well, you guys are doing great, you guys are doing a really good job…I’m just gonna have to…take my piano outside…‘cause I can’t handle so much pressure.” I didn’t want everyone looking at me! I only like to work alone. I ended up literally wheeling my huge piano OUT of the warehouse and way out into the parking lot just to get some privacy. I really love working with spray paint so I decided to use that as my medium on the piano. Spray paint is, well, not necessarily looked down upon, but it’s definitely an immature form of art by most people’s standards. I thought, “If I feel insecure and young, then I should use that to my advantage.” I wanted to harness my youthfulness and the energy of my nerves. I decided to spray paint the whole thing, and I love it. My piano isn’t my favorite of them all, but I’m still really proud about it.

AVB: I noticed all the handprints on it, is there a certain meaning to that?

JR: Basically my concept is that each hand represents all the different hands of people who contribute to the artistic process. For example, a mentor, an art teacher, a friend or a loved one, can all directly affect and inspire you. More specifically I’d say that the music I write is inspired by the highs and lows of love, and that when I write a song it’s always about someone, usually about a lover. I meditated on the meaning of that influence. I like to think about how the people I have met have directly affected my experiences and my art. The best part about those hands is that I used a really strong metallic gold. They are really BRIGHT gold, really vivid. I can’t wait to have the piano back out in the sunlight because, wow, when I see the gilded keys with rays of sun on them it takes my breath away. The shine is exactly as I intended.

AVB: You’re also a teacher, what inspires you to teach?

JR: It’s easy because English is my passion. Definitely what inspires me is the language itself. In real life I’m okay at communicating effectively, but through the written word I can really get my point across, really nail it. It’s gotten me pretty much every good opportunity I’ve ever had. I really want to afford that ability to other kids. My kids may not be the best at math (I hope I’m not projecting my own inadequacies, sometimes I worry about that), but they are damn good writers. I’m so proud of them.

AVB: The Art Walk is coming up for the month of February, do you have anything planned for that?

JR: I plan to do a full set, probably an hour of performing on my painted piano. I want to make it fanciful. I designed, sewed and painted a dress to match the piano, and I’ll be wearing that when I perform. Along with some fairy wings. We’ll have fun. I like to dress up and show everybody a good time.


Pacific Symphony’s “OC, Can You Play?” piano painted by Joni is currently on display inside the historic Santora Building from January 16th to February 7th, 2011. Special musical performance by the artist this Saturday, February 5th at 8pm during the Downtown Art Walk on the Artists Village Promenade (Second Street between Broadway & Sycamore in Santa Ana).

The Joni Renee Gallery is located at: 923 East Santa Ana Boulevard in Santa Ana. “Barbecue My Heart Gallery Exhibit and Art Party” February 19th at 6 PM during the Santiago Lofts Art Walk.

Check out www.jonirenee.com for upcoming events.

— AVB / conversationsavb@gmail.com

Conversation with Moises Camacho

(Moises Camacho working alongside Felipe Castañeda / Photo by www.ceciliaortiz.com)

Artists Village Blog: How would you describe your gallery?

Moises Camacho: Most people think that MC Gallery stands for Moises Camacho and that’s not the case. MC Gallery is “multi-cultural”, what I want to do is have art from many artists, as diverse as possible. For example, I have this sculptor from Mexico, who is important in Mexico, Felipe Castañeda, he’s a really famous sculptor in Mexico and Europe. Contrasting with his classical formation, I have Ben Walker who is a contemporary artist from California; his background is very different from Felipe. In this contrast I think there is also a harmony which makes the gallery look good. My works are a little bit different from them, but still it’s harmonically with the whole thing.

AVB: I see that you also have art from local artists here…

MC: Yea,I’m trying to promote artists with some quality, I can assure some level of quality when I see some paintings and that’s what I want to do. I don’t care if that person is from Iran, or South America, or Chinese. I’ve been hosting female painters from Argentina and they are totally different, the technique and the subject are totally different. And I have shows from Santa Ana artists: that is diversity, I want to promote and encourage.

AVB: You were recently elected as the new Santora Guild Director, what is your role as director?

MC: Personally, I’m just continuing the work that Ellen Seefeldt was doing; she did a really good job. The goal in general is to bring a specific public to the Santora, bring people who buy art. This goal has a lot to do with promotion, networking, talking with different artists and new talent and bring them up to the Santora, bring the media, organizing events with different organizations, networking with the same kind of organizations, basically promoting the building and the artists.

AVB: You’re originally from Mexico city, what brings you to the states?

MC: There are a few reasons; the first is that I won a fellowship from Vermont Studio Center at Vermont. I was so happy to go there and spend some time in 2001, the artistic exchange with artists from China, Germany, Italy, South America… was a very nice experience.  When I hear about that fellowship, I applied with all my energy and I was so happy to be there. The second one is that I have a chronic disease and here in America there are a couple of foundations dedicated to help promote and inform about this problem. And finally, I can say that the third reason is that California has better weather, in the country it’s mostly sunny all the time. At the end that’s what’s motivating why I’m still here.

AVB: What is your artwork about?

MC: I do two kinds of paintings, I grew up as a classical painter, and my formation is very classical. When I was at school I used to have workshops four hours daily drawing and painting models and most of my teachers are detail-oriented and focused on human proportions, and the perfect composition of the graphic space and traditional painting. When I got out of art school, my first job is in a small gallery in Mexico City copying masters like Rubens, Rembrandt, Velasquez. That influenced my style and at some point in my career that also became a source of income because there were times when I had no job and I had to do something in order to get income.

The other side of my work is that I’ve been experimenting with shapes and composition in my paintings. What I do is take the classical composition of landscape and vanishing point and break this simple composition in a little contemporary subject. So for example this one (seen in the photo below) is a typical composition of landscape, there’s only one vanishing point.

(Moises Camacho, “Don Quixote”, Oil on Canvas, 60”x96”)

This is also true of most of my compositions. From that point I take a subject or a thing and I kind of break it into parts. This is basically my experiment, my composition usually. You can see in this one a landscape and something on top of the vanishing point, the rest is pretty much a landscape, but I’m working on developing a theme on top of that. For me it’s more important the theme than the composition. Some artists are really involved with breaking the composition, the lines of weight in every painting, that’s not my case; I’m not really worried about that. I’m worried about what I want to talk in my paintings. My composition is very simple; my paintings are usually painted like narrations like a narrative description of something. For example this one is based on the novel from Cervantes Savedra, Spanish writer, the Don Quixote. I mean was inspired on the novel Don Qixote De La Mancha and basically talks about this guy’s dementia provoked by reading too many “Chavalier” books  and he end fighting wind meals…    In this piece I apply my experience and formation as a classical painter and my contemporary experience.

AVB: What was the art scene like in Mexico?

MC: Mexico until maybe the 80’s or 90’s was a big market for artists from Latin America especially. Mexico during this time especially in the 60’s there was a huge art market. We produce a lot of artists and we export a lot of artists. If you can check the websites, there’s a lot of Mexican artists in Europe, there’s not too many in America, I don’t know why because we’re very close to America, but yeah there’s a lot of artists and they’re really welcomed in Europe.

When I was in Mexico, basically the support came from the government, when a talent came out of the schools, if they are good, they have a lot of promotion, so the ambient becomes very competitive. There are a lot of painters but there are only a few spaces available. That’s one side, in the other side I think I’m very lucky because I grew up in a very talented generation. In my school, in my graduating year I saw schoolmates showing at European galleries’  or some of them at Metropolitan in NYC . So there were a few guys very talented and their career developed, they were known in Mexico but they also went out and get a really good market outside.

So I think the art scene in Mexico is decreasing since the economical crisis and because all these political problems right now, but hopefully we can get better soon.

AVB: You speak of the government supporting the artists, how did that work?

MC: We have two institutions, one of them is the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, they offer scholarships, grants, different economical support for artists, when you’re young they have a few scholarships. There’s another, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura, both of them offer fellowships, grants for projects and shows, and a lot of things. It’s not the government directly, but the institutions that are financed by the government.

AVB: Any current goals you’d like to share?

MC: My biggest goal was being a professional artist and I think that’s already too much. I want to eat from my paintings. That was my main goal when I came out of school and during all these years. At this point of my life I’m a professional artist, I don’t have to check a card, accomplish a schedule in a factory, I can paint in my own studio and I can sell my paintings. This is wonderful, this is any artist’s dream and this is already itself a goal, this is already what I’m trying to accomplishing since long time ago. So the only goal I have, if that’s a goal, is: do my job as perfect as possible, beautiful, and that’s the only thing that I have in mind, being a better painter and a better artist. Now I have the opportunity to work with the Santora Guild, I want to promote more artists if I can. It’s a very simple thought; I want to live day by day and I trying to be impeccable.

MC Gallery is located on the second floor of the Santora Arts Building @ 207 N. Broadway, Suite ”B”, Downtown Santa Ana, CA 92701 / mcartstudiogallery.com

-AVB

conversationsavb@gmail.com

Conversation with Matthew Miller

(Photo courtesy of the artist)

In early October, Grand Central Art Center hosted an exhibition featuring the works of residents and staff. Opening on October 2^nd during the Art Walk, “Roost” showcased works on various media, among them a performance piece by multimedia artist Matthew Miller. If you happened to be amongst the viewers, you may have seen him in the lobby, or even walked over him. The piece gave literal meaning to the phrases “walking all over you” and “being under pressure”. Last week I spoke with Matt inside his studio, the Waterman Printmaking Workshop at Grand Central Art Center.

Artists Village Blog: Tell me about the performance you did during the opening of “Roost”, how did that come about?

Matthew Miller: Because it was a resident and staff opening, they asked me to be in it, the last couple resident/staff shows I did performances, so I thought let’s do a performance again. It was really hard for me to figure out what to do for this one because it was a limited space, last time I was able to do a performance in the Main Gallery so I had more room. I actually didn’t come up with the idea for it until the night before because I just couldn’t figure it out. I almost didn’t think I was going to be able to do a performance because I didn’t think of anything until then, so that day I just built everything. There was very little testing involved to make sure that it would hold the weight of people walking over me.

AVB: How did it feel to be under that platform? Were you conscious during the whole three hours?

MM: In a lot of the performances I do I try to separate myself from the audience, I don’t like direct interaction, I’m not that much of a people-person, so in most of my performances I’m within a box or separated so I don’t have to interact with people, but I was conscious. I heard everything that was going on, I kept my eyes closed the whole time but I heard most of everything that was happening, which was interesting in itself.

AVB: Were you expecting any sort of reaction from the viewers?

MM: I didn’t have any expectations, I knew there was going to be some people who wouldn’t do it (walk over the platform), some people that wouldn’t get it, people that were afraid. A lot of children were like, “is he alive?”

A.V. So you’ve done other performances in the past, what inspires you to do these? Can you tell me a bit about some of them?

MM: When I was in school I never looked at performances or expected to be doing them, but once I took installation/performance class at Cal State Fullerton I just really got into it, I thought it was a really interesting way to share my art with the public in a way that is more visual, audio, that isn’t just a painting on a wall or a sculpture for people to just look at, they actually participate in it.

Some of my other performances…(thinks briefly), one of them was being closed in Plexiglas again, I was whipping myself with paint for an hour until the whole enclosure, and myself, were just completely covered in paint. A lot of my art, in general, has to do with portraying my emotions at the time.

For this piece (during the “Roost” opening), I had a lot of pressure going on in my life with my multiple jobs, home, life, everything. People were asking me for a lot, I had to let some people down, I was feeling a lot of pressure in my life, almost to a breaking point, I was working 100 hours a week with my various jobs and the printshop. My performance, and artwork, usually has to do with my emotions so for this I wanted to create a physical manifestation of my current emotions at the time, so that’s what I wanted, where I was going to hold the weight of people walking over me, so I was “feeling the pressure” from people walking over me.

AVB: So do you prefer doing performances over doing paintings or taking photographs?

M.M.: I think it varies, it varies with my mood, it varies with the type of show that I’m going to be in, and also with how much time I have. A painting will take a certain amount of time, while I can put together a performance pretty quickly, and once I do the performance it’s done, I leave, I walk out, there’s nothing else for people to see, so I kind of like the aspect that it’s for the people who are there at the moment and the people who missed it: they missed it forever.

AVB: Are there any themes or subjects that you go for in your work? I noticed a lot of skin, distortions and faces in your work.

M.M.: I definitely like to work with the figure, a lot of my paintings are figurative, all of my performances have to do with the body. With my performances I have the tendency to do things that most people can’t. I like to think I have a higher threshold of pain than a lot of people so a lot of my performances have to do with hurting myself, putting my body through things that the average person or just that anybody would want to put it through. I’ll whip myself, I’ll have people walk on me, I’ll make contraptions, like you saw, forcing a smile for four hours, those sort of things have to do with endurance and pain. 

With my art, pretty much everything has to do with emotion. An artist said a long time ago: “make the inside and outside identical”, and that’s kind of what I try to do with my art all the time, I try to portray my emotions through my artwork. Emotions vary, a lot of my older artwork has to do with depression, for most of my life I was clinically depressed, going off and on anti-depressants, so all the artwork that I have that has to do with masks had to do with this kind of difference between how people perceive me. A lot of people perceived me as an outgoing, happy person but that was just an exterior view, internally I was struggling with depression, very unhappy, at times suicidal, so a lot of my artwork had to do with peeling off the skin and showing what was the emotions that were underneath.

AVB: Besides working as an artist, you also work as exhibition designer and art installer here at the Grand Central Art Center and at the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion at Orange Coast College, what is that like?

M.M.: Sometimes it’s very quiet, that’s why I like working as an installer. I don’t interact with a lot of people, I get to keep to myself, work by myself, I like that aspect of it a lot, and then there’s times when it’s just chaos, there’s so much work to do, so many pedestals I have to build, I have to build walls… that’s another part of my life that I enjoy is building things. I remodeled my kitchen recently, I like to just build stuff, I’ve never been a sculptor but I enjoy building things.

AVB: Do you ever get to work directly with the artists whose shows you help setup?

M.M.:  It’s usually about half the time the artist is around for me to work with directly. This last show I worked directly with Joe Sorren. There’s definitely times where the artists never even see the show when we just put up their artwork. I think it’s interesting to be able to work with the artists, especially with laying out their show because some people are very particular, some people let you do whatever you want. It’s good to make connections at the same time.

AVB: Did you get to work with Ron English on the “Status Factory” show at OCC?

M.M.: About last year Andrea (Harris) and I went to New York, met with Ron English for the first time, went to his house, had lunch with him, that was kind of a trip in itself because I’ve known about Ron English for a long time, so to meet him and go to his house was fun. He’s one of those artists that kind of lets you do what you want, Andrea and I laid out the show without him there and it’s kind of that nervous feeling of when he shows up for the first time to the space that he’s gonna like it or not. Sometimes artists don’t like it and you’re making changes, but he was really good to work with and he liked everything we did.

AVB: Going back to your art, is there something you’ve always wanted to do, and have yet to do?

M.M.: More gallery shows would be nice, but that’s my own fault, I work so much and I usually don’t put the time and effort into my own art to get it shown in galleries, I’d like to do that more, I would like to do more performances in other spaces. There’s a lot I would like to do with my art. Ever since I graduated I’ve kind of been in this middle, kind of gray area with what I want to do with my art “now”. I need to work on a new series, I always tell myself: “once I get a new series down, done, then I’ll try to get gallery shows”, so that’s kind of what I’m in the middle of right now.

Ron English, “Status Factory” was on view at the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion through December 17, 2010

Joe Sorren, “Interruption” is on view at the Grand Central Art Center through January 2, 2011

Check out grandcentralartcenter.com for future events and happenings.

-AVB

conversationsavb@gmail.com