Within the Big is a Lot of Little

In this blog post, core artists Georgina Lewis and Patty deGrandpre interviewed each other in advance of their show, Within the Big is a Lot of Little, on view through Sunday, November 21, 2021 in our main gallery.

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Georgina: Hey! This is exciting! Here goes: Your work always makes me think about time: it has a really cinematic quality that I love where various moments and places are compressed into one image. Can you talk about your use of multiple images and what inspires you to work that way?

Patty: For me, this my way of documenting experiences that have somehow inspired me. It could be a personal event, a trip, an object, or even a quick observation of everyday life. The art making actually helps me organize my brain. Remembering life experiences becomes like a Rolodex. I have had a lot of medical struggles and my daughter has had some as well. This allows me to have access to the good stuff and weed out some things I don’t want to relive constantly. More often than not it takes multiple images to quell that need to document the experience. Like our show, it’s lot of little things that can create a moment. I combine images until I feel it has completed the portrayal of that particular moment in time.

Patty deGrandpre, Are We There Yet? (Southwest) , unique inkjet mono print on Awagami Bamboo Japanese paper, 11 x 16.5 inches

Georgina: I also love your colors; they always feel just right. What’s your process for figuring out the color palette in a work?

Patty: Thank you! I love working with color. I create palettes by making quick color stories with big markers. I usually channel my college color fundamentals class and utilize complimentary colors and contrast so color and hue choices become very methodical actually. When I am working on a piece and it becomes clear that it will morph into a series or a collection, I try to create a color story and a visual flow within the series and the individual pieces themselves. I describe it as kind of a “mix and match” approach.

Georgina: You have a real reverence for objects. Have you ever worked in 3D? PdG: I have not worked in 3D. I would like to try. Perhaps making 3D out of my prints? In college we had a required 3D design class. I really struggled so it intimidates me. It is one of those things that is on my creative bucket list. GL: Speaking of 3D: I see a lot of chairs in your work. They have such an expectant feel about them and I always love how they are positioned. What lead you to start including images of chairs and other objects (ladders, for instance)? PdG: The familiarity of certain objects appeals to me. When I starting using a lot of landscape references in my work I would include an image of a house so it was a natural evolution to include a chair. The angle and structural feel of chairs and ladders, in particular, grounded both me and my work. The chairs and the ladders are positioned as if there was someone sitting or standing on it, perhaps enjoying the abstracted view.

Patty deGrandpre, The Beauty on the Way There, inkjet, paper, block printing ink on clay board panel 16 x 20 x 2 inches

Georgina: Not sure how to describe them but sometimes your images have circles and lines (or maybe they’re rectangles): solid areas of color. Can you talk about them a little bit?

Patty: Whether it is an outline or a sphere, I love circles (maybe it’s that familiar thing again) I also love dots. They are all over my work and I usually incorporate them in some way. Both of these elements make me think of maps and “to do lists”, which may seem weird. For me, they guide the eye, then back again, like a pinball machine. Often it is an absence of color that creates the spheres. I use them as a visual rest as well as contrast. The use of the lines within the fields of color is a lot like my approach to color. I attempt to make the work visually dynamic by layering contrasting shapes and linear elements.

Georgina: By the way, I’d love to go on a road trip with you; I know you’d spot the best stuff!

Patty: Yes, we would have a blast! We should put that in our creative bucket list.

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Patty: So let’s chat……. My first question has to be: What inspired you to use so much red in this exhibition?

Georgina: The pandemic. I started lockdown in March of 2020 with very few art supplies, one of which was a tube of red paint. I’m pretty ADHD and over time I realized the benefits of working with restrictions and forcing myself to focus and exercise material constraint. Red also feels really relevant in response to all that has happened (and continues to happen) over the last 18+ months. Finally, I really like vibrant colors: they pull me out of myself.

Georgina Lewis, dec 31-20 salt – detail, graphite and paint on paper, 9 x 12 inches

Patty: Regarding the series of drawings, which are striking by the way, what was the catalyst? Was there a deliberate order when creating them?

Georgina: Thanks! The initial catalyst was a prompt early in the pandemic from the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV to “express your most intense current feelings in one drawing”. I posted an image on Instagram and then kept going, documenting my responses to internal and external events and surroundings. I’m not really done with the series although I’ve taken a bit of a breather to prep for our show. The only order to the drawings (I have far more than I am showing) is their correspondence to external events but I’m hanging them out of sequence. They’re not exactly a diary but they’re also not not a diary.

Patty: This leads me to the little circles. What do they represent?

Georgina: Thinking of blood cells and viruses and the concept of wholeness I started drawing single circles on small pieces of painted paper in spring 2020. I also recorded the sounds of my drawing, so they became an audio source, too, as well as a way to relax and focus. After a while I began making drawings with multiple circles and I now think of them as weird molecules or even groups of beings, the “lot of little” referenced in the title of our show, for instance. Most recently I’ve been adding gold to the images which goes back to a long-standing interest in alchemy and a desire to create added visual complexity. I’ve also started making 3D “circles”: small painted air-drying polymer spheres that I embed in sculptures.

Patty: There is a spontaneity to your mark making as well as your sculptures. I imagine you losing yourself in the process and really enjoying it. Am I on track with that perception or do you approach it differently?

Georgina: Yes, and no, although in this instance absolutely. I come from a mixed background: visually pretty conceptual but also with an MFA in sound/music, studying with a lot of improvisers. I’ve been on a long trajectory towards working more spontaneously, dealing with the artifacts, errors, fear, and joy that such a practice can lead to. I tend to think of my process as pushing either inwards or outwards: working from or towards an idea but during the past 18+ months I’ve also tried to make work that’s more emotionally honest and less filtered because it feels like an important act of sharing. I think many people are feeling the same things.

Georgina Lewis, maybe you could use these #3, sculptamold, DAR air-drying polymer, glitter glue, acrylic paint, 5 x 5 x 5 inches

Patty: You often put a bit of contrasting “bling” or little shiny pieces in your very organic sculptures.When did that become part of your process?

Georgina: I started to get obsessed with blingy stuff a few years ago after purchasing, in my opinion, some gorgeous and incredibly fake “gemstones'' at Michaels. They’re perfectly artificial and I love the juxtaposition with the various imperfect materials that I work with. They also have a wonderful illusory/dematerialising effect that feels complicated and exciting. My use of them has increased in the last 2 years and I’ve started to think of them as byproducts of some transformative act, of the kind, for instance, described in Ariel’s Song from The Tempest:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

We live in times of change.