Jesse Albrecht part 2

Here's part 2 of the interview -

Bret- I feel fortunate to be able to showcase your work. Yours is
a voice/perspective that we don't hear much in the contemporary art world.
Have you run across other artists who are vets of the current war in Iraq?

Jesse - Thank you for the oppourtunity to be included in the show, I would have loved to take a look but my budget is broke, so hopefully next time. Bill Donovan is a vet of the Afganistan Campaign who was in the show, but I don't know anyone else from the Iraq side. Last spring Jamie and CeCe had Bill and I to Richmond as visiting artists and that was the first time Bill and I had a chance to talk about our expierence. We did so over a late night kitchen table drawfest and it was good.

B - What is the most recent change you have seen in your work?
How have they changed from the time when you first got back from Iraq?

J - Showing my work has gone in the direction of instillation with artifacts and pictures from Iraq informing where I am coming from. With Great Uncles gassed in France in WWI and his brothers at Pearl Harbor and Tarawa, my Grandfather 3 1/2 years in New Guinea and Uncles in Vietnam I am examining my family history and how that informed me and my expierence. Initially I couldn't build the pieces fast enough to pour out what I saw, did and felt. My work continues to become more refined in the emotion and expierence are represented. Performance is working its way into the mix as well.

B - Are you still making similar forms with text carved into and/or
painted onto them?

J - My last series of ceramic work was without text but relief of rattlesnakes and straight razors being some of the reoccuring subjects. The cone is the form I am still working with, abstracted to or from the human form. I crowbared the word "love" into some pots I made last summer which all ended up wedding gifts for my closest army buddies. Love N' War has been the series I have been working on for the past three years, and much text has appeared as recognition of friends back in Iraq, wishing their safe return.

B -Did you ever question your thought to write on/into
your pieces?

J - The first year back I didn't question anything I wrote on my work or why I was doing it. Now it is obvious the gap between who I was before I left and who I returned as was put into my work. I didn't want to pull anything back but the most taboo thoughts and feelings.

B - What does the Arabic script say on the untitled piece?
I enjoy seeing what foreign languages do to audiences.
What was you intent in using it in this piece?

J - Allah Akbar, God is Great(er) is the Arabic text I think you are referring to, which is off the Iraqi flag post 1991. It was used to reference some horrors Saddam perpatrated during his rule. With that piece I was screaming back about what I did in Iraq, what it was about for me. I was remembering Iraqis I met who bear Saddam's brutality missing fingers and toes. I was remembering the experience of purchasing medicine, supplies, and delivering it to a childrens hospital in Mosul. I was remembering the medical treatement I provided Iraqi children, civilians, and soldiers--remembering some of the good I did while in Iraq.

Jesse Albrecht

Jesse Albrecht is one of the artists in the current show, "The Word Made Fresh".

Here's his statement for the show:
"My art speaks about my personal experiences in Iraq - what I saw, did, smelled, tasted, felt and thought. WWI, WWII, and Vietnam also sent family members around the globe--war has spanned nearly a century for my family and its effects are ever present. A year of kill or be killed shattered my personal understanding of good and evil, right and wrong. Art helps me process and communicate such an overwhelming sensory and emotional experience and its daily effects. It has become a means to open a dialogue about the experience of combat--love n war--coming home. From beautiful to nauseating sights, feelings, experiences, thought and action. I can not internalize my experience. I can not forget those fighting and those fallen. "

This ceramic piece is titled "I Chose to Live"


Here's part 1 of an interview with him-

Bret: As a gallerist, I have had a real physical interaction
with both of your pieces in the current show. Both
are fairly difficult for one person to handle. I had to
have someone help me lift "I Chose to Live" off of the floor
onto the pedestal. I can read and understand what you
are communicating with the text on these pieces, but I felt
like I was tapping into a more physical understanding
of your experiences as an Iraq War Vet.

Jesse: I had been back in the United States for around eight months when I made those pieces and they were at the front end of the work I made about my experiences. The clay was a canvas, I wasn't thinking much about form, just building the pieces as quickly as possible, often an hour or two--the decoration (drawing/painting on them) was my focus, which was fast and overpowered with emotion/experience. I needed them to be thick and heavy so I could tear into them while I decorated them and not worry about them collapsing. It was a raw time personally and for my art.

Bret: I want to quote you here:
"I need to speak (through art) about my experience—what I saw, did, smelled, tasted, felt and thought—while in Iraq and now while I process such an overwhelming sensory and emotional experience my art serves as the physical through which I am processing that experience."

Jesse: I meet a lot of people who have never talked to someone who has been to Iraq. It got to the point where I felt I had an obligation to make my statement through my work about my experience because the mainstream media misses it so much of the time. And its a different experience for everyone and as it evolves...but the day to day I get here reading the papers and watching the news is not what the soldier is seeing, feeling, thinking...so I wanted to initiate that conversation with people. I don't have the eloquence or space to write about the sensory and emotional experience Iraq has to offer, much less how I am sifting through my old existance in relation to who I am now...hopefully my work captures just a little bit of that.

Bret: Again, because I've been so up close and personal with these
pieces, I was even able to smell the dirt/mud/clay/mold/algae.
These all spoke to me about memory and its transient nature.
I witness so many people forgetting about what is going on.

Jesse: I am realizing memory changes with where I am at mentally/physically...people can't forget what they never knew, but that is why I am speaking about my time in Iraq. Hopefully I can bring something to people about Iraq aside from another news blip that easily blends away. I hope it initiates a conversation that helps inform people. Without an outlet the outdoor storage initiates the growth of algae...reading into it I think of the homeless veteran and relate that to my work stored behind a garage, covered with mud, ice, mold, and leaves.

Bret: Please tell me about the date on "I Chose to Live"

Jesse: For the first year or two back from Iraq I didn't want to be around people I didn't know becasue I would scan for a threat, but when I would be alone I would become parinoid to the point of hallucination at times. I would barracade myself in my studio so I would hear someone if they were in the building..."I Chose to Live" was the date of a particular night in the studio when I had a real hallucination/breakdown.

"The Word Made Fresh" Opening Jan. 4, 7-9pm

The colors seem to be a little off here. This show brings together 24 artists from all over the U.S. and one artist from France (REMED)! The opening is this Friday. There will be a puppet show by Sean Samoheyl around 7:30.

Contributing artists: Jamie Boling, Bill Donovan, Leah Beeferman, Matt Betts, Chris Lawson, Jesse Albrecht, Liam Devowski, Travis Robertson, Max Hubenthal, Mike Ball, Dean AEIOU, Cece Cole, Brooke Inman, Heather Bregman, Bret Payne, REMED, Andy Kozlowski, Anthony Meloro, Kate Horne, Travis Jackson, Chris Coy, Arthur Hash, and Sean Samoheyl

AMANDA MARIE's "An Unfinished Story"; New Paintings

TRANSMISSION
presents:
'An Unfinished Story'
Paintings by Amanda Marie

Show opens Friday, December 7, 7-9pm
Show runs Dec. 7-29
Gallery hours: Wed, Fri: 11-6, Sat: 12-5
or call for appointment: 804.200.9985

TRANSMISSION
321 Brook Rd.
Richmond, VA 23220
www.transmissionrva.blogspot.com
email: transmissionrva@gmail.com
804.200.9985

Image 1: 'Great Gray Elephant', diptych 18 x 48 inches, acrylic and spraypaint on canvas
Image 2: 'Bus Bus', 18 x 24 inches, acrylic and spraypaint on canvas
Image 3: 'Fun Planes', diptych 18 x 48 inches, acrylic and spraypaint on canvas

BIO:
Amanda Marie’s vintage sewing patterns and children's book characters are vivid and graphic bringing the audience a nostalgic warmth and drawing them into the hidden metaphors and relationships. She has chosen a hybridized style which incorporates spray paint stencil graffiti and neo-neo expressionism with acrylic paint. Amanda Marie has been living and painting in Colorado since 2001. After two years at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design she was represented at Andenken Gallery, where she shows her paintings several times a year. Amanda lived in Denver for three years and now lives in the Fort Collins area. She has illustrated magazines (Juxtapoz, The Onion, Syntax Magazine), newspaper covers, and children's books. Recently, she painted large interior and exterior murals on local Denver Businesses.

emailbus.jpg

Langdon Graves

Langdon Graves is showing here in Richmond at ADA gallery.
You should make it out to see her sculptures and drawings
(right after you come to Transmission and see Amze's work)!
For a taste: www.langdongraves.com
Her craftsmanship is superb!

Interview with Amze Emmons

Interview Part 1:

Bret (Transmission):Do you see your works operating more as personal narrative, universal narrative, or purely fictional narrative?

Amze: Good question.. I never really conceptualized the work in terms of telling a story. It seems to exist more as a documentary collage of a moment in time or evidence of the activity of making. The things I draw again and again--tents, water bottles, jersey barriers--they all start to become characters to me; so maybe in that sense I am telling a story about the detritus we leave in our wake.

B: You successfully blur linear time with many of your paintings/ works of art. (Respond if inclined)

A: Wow, thank you. Manipulating the audience’s sense of time isn’t something I set out to do. I conceptualize the work as being a frozen moment, like a film still of larger events that are unfolding around the viewer. I think a lot about cinematic time, particularly pregnant moments just before or just after something traumatic occurs.

B: Do you see similarities between your use of visual samples (from the Sunday Times) and the use of samples in music? Would you relate more to any specific musicians and how they operate or is your goal to move beyond that?

A: There are definitely similarities between how I collect and collage source material in the making of my work and what a DJ or musician does with music samples. I would love to say that my process is somehow influenced by or related to DJ Spooky, Del, or the Books, but that would probably be overstating the point. I have

these regular activities of collecting imagery that fuels the work;

the found images then get sifted, collaged and redrawn over and over, and then I try to pull everything into the same space.

B: What influences are there in your palette?

A: I spend a lot of time thinking about color and perception in my work. I have a friend who is a neuroscientist and we have an ongoing dialogue about visual perception and the brain. I try to employ color as a kind of camouflage to draw my audience in close before they have to wrestle with the content and contradictions in the imagery. The colors themselves are culled from what I see in daily life: a window display at a dollar store on the Lower East Side, a trip to Target, a fruit vendor from a recent trip to Italy, etc. I guess the thread that connects them all is commerce and commercial goods. The sources of the palette are probably as much a nod to pop art as they are to the power of mass marketing and consumer culture.

Amze Emmons at TRANSMISSION Oct. 5-30

TRANSMISSION is proud to present:
"VAGUE TERRAIN"
Recent work by AMZE EMMONS (Philadelphia, PA)

Opening: Friday, October 5, 7-10pm
TRANSMISSION
321 Brook Rd.
Richmond, VA 23220
804.200.9985

Amze will be giving a presentation at VCU's School of the Arts building, 3rd floor,
in the "Fish Bowl", Thursday, October 4, 11am!
This is a great opportunity to interact with the artist and ask him questions about why/what/how he creates.

To help celebrate the opening,
Nate's Taco Truck will be set up next to the gallery
to fill your bellies with chicken, meat, and vegetarian delights.
It's cheap and delicious and open during the artwalk.
NO, it doesn't get any better.

Across the street from the gallery, the Etching Tin (Richmond recording studio) will have two live bands - HO-AX and Ten Commandments.
You can also take this opportunity to check out what their space is like
if you are an interested band/musician.