a visit with Martha Eleen
In Space and Place : The Perspective of Experience, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan contends that a space requires a movement from a place to another place. Similarly, a place requires a space to be a place. Hence, the two notions are co-dependent.
My Space is a series of paintings about the space between my skin and the outside world.
Paintings were grouped leaning on the floor, in situ according to the rooms where they had been painted. The tour began and ended in my studio, a separate building, with Waltz, and then went through my son's main floor apartment; I, Huck, and upstairs to my bedroom; Felt, and office; unfinished, untitled work. It was very different from a gallery show where work is edited and arranged according to a call and response between them. When the work leaves the studio it begins to take on a life of it's own. I am never sure what I've done while I'm working on it. This tour showed the process and problems of creation while the work is still unresolved.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
There are two problems with painting. The first is to figure out what a painting is. The second is to figure out how to make a painting.
- Frank Stella
Does your work rely on technology and if so how?
Painters cannot afford to ignore technology as it is now part of art history and is included in our knowledge when we begin a painting. Painting has the same goals as new media art: to connect across space, to make visible the experience of space.
Who’s work is pushing you creatively these days?
Dorothy Caldwell
And finally what is on frequent studio audio rotation?
Sinners Crossroads (gospel)
Thanks for the studio sneak peek Martha!
My Space opens March 29th and runs until April 30th at Loop Gallery
