MENAGE A TROIS ART SHOW
INTERVIEWS WITH STEVE OLSON, CRAIG STECYK III, SUSANNE MELANIE BERRY
INTERVIEWS BY TERRI CRAFT
PHOTOS BY SUSANNE MELANIE BERRY, TIBBY ROTHMAN, DAN LEVY AND BRANDON KLEIN.
CRAIG STECYK III
How long did it take you to make the art for the Menage A Trois show?
That all depends where you start the clock to compute. It began three months ago when we initially discussed the concept and that philosophical discourse was steadily carried on all the way through. We each were finishing stuff in the gallery right up to the opening. If you know how something is going to end up, it is pointless to start in the first place. None of us had a clue how or if it would turn out.
Explain your choice of material and the tools you use to make your art.
The entire reason for doing the show was for Steve, Susanne Melanie and I to be able to react to each other in real time situation with a difficult to execute finite deadline. This was not to be a jam per se but an interactive process that retained each person’s autonomy. So the materials selected needed to be malleable yet readily identifiable as being different from those being used by the others. One off Polaroid images, hand printed monotype impressions using archival pigments and stretched simulated faux surfaces with attached pleasure prongs, marquee glyphs and the like were chosen. My characteristic process is to make pieces on site and leave them where they were created. In the middle of no place at all. If they are successful they succeed in blending in with the landscape and go unnoticed, as a sort of random vernacular background noise. So developing a methodology of painting and printing that is portable, buildable, variable and non viable as an economic proposition is the guiding principle. My tools vary from found objects to profoundly misplaced detritus. For me, taking the roadshow methodology into a salon format was a stretch. One day all were in Arizona the next it was WeHo.
STEVE OLSON
“I make art, because I have to… and that’s it. To let it be known…. the message that is.”
How long did it take you to make the art for the Menage A Trois show?
The Menage A Trois show ideas have been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. To execute the actual art was a matter of five solid days of working at a nonstop speed. It’s not how long, but how the idea happens.
Explain your choice of medium and material, and the tools you use to make your art.
The tools I choose to use are stretcher bars made from wood, 2×2, and door skin. Fabric, depending on what it is that will go on top… and the message…
SUSANNE MELANIE BERRY
“Good memories held not only in the slice of moment recorded in the photo but the time spent creating and hanging out. I like that a lot.”
How long did it take you to make the art for the Menage A Trois show?
I’m going with the butterfly effect… Who knows when or where it all ready started…or what designates its end?
Explain your choice of medium and material, and the tools you use to make your art.
Today, we have a lot of immediacy communicating with each other via texting, Facebook, Twitter and iPhones. You can take a picture and share it with thousands in seconds. The trade off is the loss of intimacy, closeness, and real conversations that happen face to face. One of the things I always loved about Polaroid pictures was directly after taking the photo, everyone gathers around waiting for it to develop – talking, joking and waiting with anticipation. When the picture is ready and comes to life, a whole new flurry of excitement or disappointment happens and maybe another picture, or a few more pictures. With this close interaction and dialogue going on person to person in real time, we can hear the inflections in each other’s voices, see expressions and body English of each other. Touch, push, hug, tease and compliment each other while seeing real responses. Does it take more time out of our lives? Yes, it does. Good memories held not only in the slice of moment recorded in the photo but the time spent creating and hanging out. I like that a lot. Besides it’s the anarchist, the punker and the fuck-you in me that says if you all are taking iPhone photos and firing them off into the universe for mass exposure, I’m just going to take these original one-off non-reproducible pictures for a personal private secret moment.
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