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Welcome to Venison's Weekly Blog! Here you will find advice, show reviews, thoughts and short articles by the Venison Team. We welcome your input comments and thoughts in return! 
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Quarterly

Studio Visit with Matt Hall

1/18/2017

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Hearing isn't Listening // 25" x 27 // 2016 // Matt Hall

Article by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner

​I had found out about Matt Hall's work, like so many other artists I have found recently, through Instagram. I loved the way he was combining traditional skeletal articulation and conceptual ideas.  Pouring over the sculptures and cabinets on his website, I saw little hints of Joseph Cornell, Mark Dion, and a sort of Mellvinian disposition of sadness just under the surface of the work.  

​Knowing Matt works mainly with road kill and specimen preservation I had a pretty good idea of what I’d be walking into when I reached his Portland studio, but I was ready for some surprises as well. I shuffled my camera around in my bag as walked up to the blank side of an industrial building up to an unassuming door “with bad graffiti” on it as Matt had instructed.  
PictureMother's Failure // The Secret Inside // 7" x 5" x 23" // 2012
​Below the cabinet is a little worktable covered in Tupperware and clear boxes filled with bones, feathers, and the sort.  An open container has pieces of a skull.  “This is a porcupine” Mat chimes in. “Since I work with mostly road kill or animals who died naturally sometimes there’s trauma that’s been dealt to the bones, and they just come out shattered like this. I’m not even sure if I can use this one because the damage is so bad. It becomes this very complicated puzzle that I can sometimes put back together, but I don’t know about this one,” he says looking sadly at the bits of skull. 

The first room was a bike workshop, with another studio sectioned off to the right. After greeting Matt at the door we walked through the shop to his studio in the back. Matt drew back a little curtain and we stepped into his space. The walls were covered in open-faced boxes that were filled with delicate little specimens of small skeletons, dried blue flowers, skulls, a naturally mummified Rat, and bits of paper.

​“That’s my Cabinet of curiosity. I like to change it around every now and then, but I’m pretty happy with it right now” Matt tells me as leaned in to get a closer look the mummified rat and some dried blue flowers. I mentioned that I love the color of the flowers and he told me how he likes to see how long the color lasts, and keeps track of how long it takes for the colors on things like that to turn brown. 

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Sorting Area // Photography by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
Below the cabinet is a little worktable covered in Tupperware and clear boxes filled with bones, feathers, and the sort.  An open container has pieces of a skull.  “This is a porcupine” Mat chimes in. “Since I work with mostly road kill or animals who died naturally sometimes there’s trauma that’s been dealt to the bones, and they just come out shattered like this. I’m not even sure if I can use this one because the damage is so bad. It becomes this very complicated puzzle that I can sometimes put back together, but I don’t know about this one,” he says looking sadly at the bits of skull. 

I could tell how much he loves his craft. I saw it in the way he got excited to show me the different piles of bones and explained the different processes of preservation he uses. I’m always very drawn to these mad scientist types of artists who are honing a craft on a backbone of conceptual ideas. There is something to be said about wanting to perfect a skill, and enjoying the labor of a project, and when it comes to articulation there is a fair amount of labor and patience involved. In the opposite side of the room Matt shows me his articulation bench where another little skull is in the process of being mounted on brass wire. I was impressed looking at the careful and clean way the pieces were fit together, but Matt immediately tells me how he could have done it better.

“Each time I articulate something I see how I can improve on the next one…” he says as he fiddles with the brass rod attaching the jawbone.
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Cabinet of Curiosities // Photograph by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
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Detail of Cabinet of Curiositiy (mummified rat) // Photograph by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
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Plasticization of a Deer's Heart // Photograph by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
Back on the other side of the room sitting unassumingly next to that morning’s coffee cup sat the partially articulated torso of a deer. Next to it was an opaque orange juice container with something meaty looking suspended from its green plastic lid.  As if to answer my inquiring gaze at the container, Matt steps over and opens it up. ​

“I wanted to try plasticization,” he said “it’s where you take all the liquid in a specimen and replace it with a plastic. When you do this it doesn’t loose its shape.” Matt points to the wall above and shows me a dehydrated coyote heart. “ I did this one as an experiment and I don’t really like the way it looks. It just doesn’t look like a heart anymore, it looks more like a piece of jerky.” I had to agree with him there.

He held up the heart from the container again a mix of pride and excitement on his face “but this way it keeps it’s shape. This is the first time I’ve tried this, but after some research and trial and error it’s not as difficult as I thought it would be. This is just an experiment though. I’m hoping once it’s fully cured I will be able to drill a hole through the center so you can see right through it... There’s still a chance I could mess this up.”  He says with some apprehension as he closes up the container ans we both take a seat at the worktable.
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Hearts, Skeletal Articulations, and This Morning's Coffee // Photography by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
“I only use animals that die naturally or from road kill…” he emphasizes again. And explains that some people are very sensitive about his work because he is using animal parts.  “It’s not easy for everyone to look at, especially when I’m processing them. Even though I clean the bones and process them somewhere else, I still like to draw the curtain on my studio when I’m doing something particular unusual. Sometimes even my studio mates can get a little grossed out, so I try keeping things out of sight out of common curtsey. Thus the Heart in the container.” 

​I ask about the deer, and Matt explains a friend found it while hiking and called him right away. “My friends all know I’m into this kind of stuff so they will let me know when they find things like this.  I got out there as soon as I could because timing can be crucial. I looked around for a while but didn’t find it immediately. Someone, probably a park ranger, had moved it off the main path and into a little ditch.  People don’t like seeing dead things, so they probably just moved it out of sight.” The heart Matt had been plasticizing was from the same deer as the skeleton, and he told me he plans to use them in the same piece for an upcoming show at Antler in October.
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Matt Hall in the studio // photograph by Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
We spent more time talking about different preservation techniques, Matt’s upcoming show, how slow the work goes sometimes, and had a few exciting minutes talking about how Melville’s Moby Dick was the ultimate story of the Hero’s Journey after I noticed he had a copy of the first page of the book hanging on his wall.  

Since our visit Matt has successfully drilled through his dear heart.
You can check it out and follow him on his Instagram @matthallartpdx
PictureMithridatism // Memory Magic Wonder // 17” x 10” x10" // 2013
   

​ Matt Hall grew up on a small farm on the outskirts of Klamath falls Oregon. He moved to Portland Oregon in 1997 to attend the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he majored in painting and drinking coffee.


He's had a lifelong love affair with natural history museums, taxidermy, hidden spaces, sea monsters, and scientific phenomena. Matt's work, through the recording, preservation, and recontextualization of natural ephemera and found objects, deals with the intersection of death, memory, loss, and wonder. He currently lives in North Portland, where he can be found riding his bicycle, drawing trees and waving at neighborhood cats.


You can keep up with Matt's new work and progress through his instagram @matthallartpdx
and at 
http://www.matthallartpdx.com/

Keep an eye out for Matt's work this fall at Antler Gallery




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Up Close and Wearable: Tides

9/28/2016

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Preview by Nazish Chunara

Tides is a series of wearable garments by Amabelle Aguiluz, whose work we've been following since the beginning of the year. ​Her influences very much derive from bodies of water and the organisms that live in them. From the first time I saw her work at Art Share LA to her collaborative residency with Szalt Dance Co and their production of Water Stories, we've seen so much growth and transformation in the making and function of her hand spun, machine knit, designs. Materials include found, donated yarns, and 100% fair trade cotton, allowing the artist to keeping the project eco-friendly. ​
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Amabelle has worked with fashion in the past, so when I visited her studio her for an interview for our Spring issue, I asked if she'd do it again. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited about this! 
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I wanted to work with light and shadow to see the knitted textures in motion. The goal was to see how each of the pieces transform through layering by building texture upon texture.
Tides is a project inspired by sea foam and water created without set patterns. Each piece is unique and would be difficult to replicate. I started with experimenting with small shapes relying on intuitive knitting to guide me. Then I molded and hand stitched each knit swatch to build each garment. The process became a puzzle and each shape became part of a collage. The layers show stages of growth and my interest in texture and volume. The knitting approach happens very organically; it is how I relate to the way patterns form in nature and in the ocean - free flowing, never creating the same shape twice.
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Amabelle Aguiluz is an artist living and working in downtown Los Angeles. Her practice incorporates clothing, textile, fiber sculpture and installation processes that study rhythm, nature, poetic expression and human experience captured through the repetitive motions of crafting. She studied at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and graduated in 2011 at The Fashion Institute of Technology, New York BFA in Fashion Design with an emphasis in Knitwear Design and Textiles. Her installation and wearable artwork has been exhibited at Art Share LA, MorYork Gallery, The Last Bookstore for Maiden LA 2016, Women's Center for Creative Work as part of LA's Public Art Biennial Current LA: Water in Los Angeles and The Triennale Internationale des arts textiles en Outaouais, Canada. ​
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Designer // Amabelle Aguiluz  // @amabelleaguiluz
​
Photographer // Mike Carreiro // @mikecarreiro

Model // Ashley Chung // @chungashley
​
Hair // Sydney Costley // @sydney_costley

Stylist // Natalie Hemmati

MUA // Aaron Paul // @aaronpaulbeauty

These Days LA // @thesedays.la (for those of you who have your eye on the new organic cotton bulky knit sweater)
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Chasing the Moon & Falling to Earth

5/10/2015

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A studio visit with Bryan Kring 
by Danielle Schlunegger

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On Bryan Kring's desk lay multiple twigs with birds and clouds on them. A pile of yellow balloons lay close by, the next piece to be attached on Escape Plan. Paper dragonflies dot the wall of his Oakland studio, where he hands me his prototype for Lunae Secutor- "... a moveable book in the form of a caterpillar specimen. On the lid is a specimen label with the insect’s name and the location of its collection. Folded into the underside of the lid is a fictional scientific account of this particular caterpillar species’ inability to metamorphose into a butterfly. As a solace for this loss it develops an attraction to the moon, which it passionately follows. When the wooden handle is turned the caterpillar 'walks' toward a paper moon that is illuminated by a hidden light."

"I looked up the coordinates where it was 'found'...It's in a desert, in the middle of no where." he says while I cradle the box in my hand. Driven by tiny wooden cams, the caterpillar wriggled around in its box. I began to think of this little paper insect as a strange immortal being out of a grecian legend, fated to keep chasing its lunar love long past any of our lifetimes. 

I set the prototype aside and walk into the other room as Bryan carefully pulled out some of his finished pieces from a suitcase. One after another I am handed beautifully constructed books and boxes: the story of a man who falls in love with a bear (which I recognized from the door knob of his studio); a fold out book telling the story of a man making due on the bottom of the sea when a floating circus woman comes to him in a shipping container; a diorama book of a sea monster terrorizing a ship.  Then he hands me a box with a dragonfly that shuddered around inside, avoiding the many human hands with broomsticks that might thawk it. The letterpress text speaks to an early memory of the death of the dragonfly, and the regret of the broomstick-wielding humans. 

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A bit of darkness and mystery comes through in each book. Each short story is a wonderful and a strange little vignette with exceptionally executed illustrations and moving mechanics. I was sucked into each box and its story. Each had its own kind of sweet melancholic humor, like the spaceman of The Fall, plummeting towards earth -- who, had he packed a sandwich, would have had time to eat it.

Keep an eye out for my full interview with Bryan Kring in Venison's Summer issue where i'll ask him about making multiples, moving mechanisms, and more about those coordinates that lead to the middle of the desert. 
You can see more of Bryan work on
 KringDesign.com and  through his Instagram @bryankring
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Time Peace &The Hustle (In Progress) - Studio Visit with Anja Ulfeldt

4/6/2015

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Studio Visit by: Danielle Schlunegger

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Public Reception: Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm
Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART


Lost & Foundry Oakland will be unveiling new works by Artist in Residence, Anja Ulfeldt this upcoming Saturday. Time Peace is the culmination of a 5-week residency featuring a series of rotary devices that measure time and symbolize its passage. I wanted to visit her in the studio for a little sneak peek before the opening. Upon entering the metal door of The Lost and Foundry Gallery this past Wednesday, I was immediately confronted with two huge barrel-like structures, and several smaller versions lining the walls. Covered in mahogany and cherry veneer, the wall "tumblers" still had their plexiglass faces covered and tapped tight with blue painters tape, evocative of large faceless wall clocks. 

As part of the crowd funding campaign to build the work during her residency, contributors donated objects that they had felt an attachment to for one reason or another to be weathered down by these tumblers. In effect this transformation would lift the weight of the donor’s previous inability to let go of the objects, relieving them of their attachment through a mechanical weathering of the object. 

“You’ll be able to see through them,” says Ulfeldt, placing her fingers on the blue tape holding the industrial covering onto the plexiglass, gently spinning it on the wall.

“The tumblers are definitely a sound piece. They have these mahogany shelves inside like a dryer, that help lift/stir the contents and then drop them. It's supposed to be like a chorus of randomly timed falling sounds. The motors make a whirring/grumbling sound when they run. I kinda love it! I just got a donation of a pile of coins too which will probably sound great falling every couple of minutes." Across the room she pulls a cardboard box out from under a collapsible table and sits cross-legged on the floor, opening the flaps. Inside rests the collection of objects that have been donated for their eventual destruction. 

“Growing up in what might have qualified as a hoarder house I have a close personal relationship to the question of what gives an object power over us emotionally? What makes us love an object of art for reasons we sometimes don’t understand? Often in art there is a focus on longevity. Some artworks are made of stone and can outlive the civilization that created them while others are intentionally ephemeral. But what about other items those individuals collect and keep in their lives and how does this relate to wealth accumulation and assignment of value on objects, material and art? I'm particularly interested in how we assign value to possessions beyond the obvious monetary value of the materials they contain.”  

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She shows me a sand dollar with -January 5th 2014 -Surfing for the first time- written in fat black marker on the back. Then pulls out a pair of glasses, some hearing aids, a softened and sad looking plaster cast of a child’s face, a little ceramic bird, and several other everyday objects from the box.
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“I know the story of some of these objects better than others,” she said holding the sand dollar out to me as we rummaged through the box together. I turned it over in my hand and knew this was the last time I would see these little objects that someone, somewhere, had cherished in their whole, un-mutilated state.  

She closed up the box and placed it back under the table, and humored my curiosity regarding the giant wheels in the center of the room.
I watched her step into one, and as it turned around and around with her steps it became evocative to a time in my childhood. For a moment I was back in a county fair funhouse, rolling about with a bunch of other squealing children in an oversized padded wheel. The sounds of those memories faded away and all was silent except for the loud whirring of the metal-framed wheel turning under the warm gallery lights.   
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 Ulfeldt steps out and explains The Hustle (working title),  “… Invites visitors to enter one of two walks of life: one a fast-moving hustle, the other a seductively soft resting place. These take the form of rotary drums sharing an axle and transmission. The gearing is designed so that the movement of the fast-paced climbers eventually destabilizes those lounging on the slow-moving side. The treadmill … speaks to the labor of love that is sculpture and the sculptors’ love of labor. The Treadmill represents the desire for purpose and the need to work toward that purpose.  If you can understand the idea of art for art’s sake then why not labor for labor’s sake.

"This piece is also inspired by the level of hustle required to survive as an artist in the Bay Area. While the love is the labor and the labor is the love there is still this feeling that if you stop to rest you may never make it back onto the wheel or that the fast paced world of money may just pass you by. The level of hustle required to be an artist in the Bay Area is increasing at a rapid rate and many people are leaving. So I pose the question: How much hustle can you sustain? Is it really worth it?”

Ulfeldt stairs up with tired eyes at the pair of wheels she has meticulously welded together and layered in plywood. I left her to her work at the Lost and Foundry studio. She seemed anxious to get back to it, probably with a grand to-do list looming in her head.

The question Ulfeldt had previously stated rang again and again in my head. At first this question in her statement threw me off.

“Is it worth it?”

As an artist, The Hustle speaks to me of the amount of work many Bay Area artists must endure to be able to sustain their practice: working 40 hours a week, producing art, maintaining the work load and personal relationships, and the attempt to grow an ever evolving network to forward my creative career. This is a task many artists face. It can be wholly overwhelming at times, and can feel utterly unsustainable. How do I keep my own momentum moving forward without overturning everything I’ve been working towards?

“Is it worth it?"

"Is it really worth it?”


You can Interact with The Hussle (working title) and join Anja Ulfeldt for a public reception of Time Piece this Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm at Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART 

http://lostandfoundryoakland.com/
http://www.anjaulfeldt.com/
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Anja is the Co-Founder and Director of Basement Gallery Oakland (slated to reopen in May, 2015) as well as a founding member of the Artstead Boat Project, a floating venue for art and performance built from a converted potato barge. She is a recipient of the Visions from the New California Award in 2010, TSFF & SOMArts Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award in 2013 and The AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts in 2014 resulting in a three-week fellowship at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. 


The daughter of a painter and an engineer, Anja grew up in Berkeley, CA, and earned her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2001 and her MFA from Stanford University in 2014. Her recent installations have become know as “performable objects” and are physical scenarios in which the participant becomes an impromptu performer. 

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