May 2012

Table Of Contents May 2012 6 Boston Comic Convention 2012

34 Deborah Davidson

46 Inspiration x Glovebox

Founder/Editor-In-Chief

Darius Loftis

Associate Editor

Claudia Puccio

Contributing Designer

Liz Comperchio

Contributing Writers

Liz Comperchio Zoe Hyde Claudia Puccio

Marketing

Pete Cosmos Kevin Hebb

Associate Web Designer

Nicklaus Rachielles

Photographer

Nick Pereksta

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Boston Com Convention

Written by Claudia Puccio Photography by Nick Pereksta

mic

Just one short month after our first anniversary and

our first printed issue, the Abstraks team gathered at the Boston Comic Convention. This was exciting for a few reasons: 1. Abstraks almost exclusively employs nerds.

2. It was a great opportunity to get out there, meet some other artists and “pimp� our magazine.

3. Given both the online and statewide nature of our magazine, not all of the team had actually met one another.

Although this was my first time at any Comic Con, the internet had fully prepared me for what I might see; Boston did not disappoint. Comic Con was an orgy of wonderful costumes, fantastic people, an excellent variety of comics, toys - vintage and new - miscellaneous nerdities and most of all ART! Abstraks had a blast and we will definitely be back for Comic Con 2013.

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Page 16: Rebbeca Fine

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Above: Elizabeth Siegel

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Deborah 34 Davidson Written by Zoe Hyde Photography by Kathy Chapman & Chris Yeager

I go to meet Deborah Davidson at her studio as Boston first begins to dip its toe into real summer weather. It’s 75 degrees out, sunny, it’s the Sunday before marathon Monday (so everybody and they’re grandmother are in town) and one of the first Red Sox games of the season starts, unbeknownst to me, at 1 O’clock in the afternoon.

Already running late, the ensuing MBTA nightmare ensures that I am an hour and a half late for this interview, but Deborah is kind and assures me it’s not a problem. Her studio is full of light and pictures; tables are centered around a floor area that is currently taken up with several grey-blue rectangular columns of varying sizes, the largest probably reaching somewhere around 3-4 feet tall. This is Standing See, Deborah’s most recent installation, not quite finished but certainly on its way to completion.

Open magazines and photographs of leaves, water, and other various aspects of the outdoors lie prone on surrounding surfaces, without organization but in purposeful formation. There’s a lot in the room but it doesn’t feel cluttered; I am sure everything has a place in Deborah’s mind, a mental shelf on which it sits as its physical counterpart languishes, merely a map of a notion. Deborah immediately launches into telling me information about Standing See and about her various past works before I can turn on the recorder, and when I finally get it on the only sentence it picks up audibly is, “I was just thinking, what would happen if you took a painting and wrapped it around a sculpture?”

Zoë: I know you just kind of went through this, but, your art work has a unique process, and I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about what that is.

Deborah: Oh for a long time. It seems to be, even when I make drawings, it’s sort of the natural impulse of the way I make things.

Deborah: Sure, so I - well what I didn’t say, is that these hybrid sculptures come out of a series of paintings that I’ve been working on for a long time, working the same way, and I was getting very interested in what was happening behind the painting. So I was painting behind the painting and I thought, ‘Well it would make sense just to go all the way behind the painting and make an object, so that’s were the original idea for these came from, and basically what I’m doing is I’ve built many, many layers of color and form so that I excavate back through it through sanding, and then I work - it may be unsuccessful - I repaint the whole surface and I just keep building the layer until the surface is right. These are meant to be seen as a group, so I think of these [columns in Standing See are seen as pairs so they are kind of mirroring each other, and they’ll be installed in the gallery with a lot of space around them].

Zoë: Thinking about what’s behind things?

Zoë: Is this a new process or something you’ve been working on for a while?

Cover: Photography by Chris Yeager Page 37: Photograph by Chris Yeager

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Deborah: Kind of, what’s behind the thing. A lot of what signifies the process for each artist is something really deeply rooted, like you say, ‘what is that about, that you would cover something to reveal it?’ So I think sometimes, what is the metaphor of that? I mean I don’t have the answer but that’s just the way I make stuff.

Zoë: That’s “your process”.

Deborah: (laughing) right, that’s “the process”. So, like, for example, those three little paintings on the wall, which I think I might put in the show, are the same kind of method. I’m working the same way when it’s two-dimensional.

They are reflecting on the wall in an interesting way too, so I’m interested in the painting existing outside of itself.

Deborah: I’m not in California and I’m not part of that group but there was a group of California artists coming in at the 60’s, they were very interested in surfaces, and their work was all about reflections and so on. The impulse of the work or the shapes was related to language.

The earlier series is called “Glyphs”.

See”, because I was thinking about that I’m trying to make something that I want to see, or that I’m seeing and I want to be manifest. The series a long, long time ago started with my son learning to speak, and I was very fascinated with how that happens, because it’s the most amazing thing, and since I’m not an academic or a researcher, it became my artwork. Sometimes I would kinda steal from him, things that he would say, and those would become titles. Also, this always interests me: I always think I’m diving into new territory, and then you come back around… you know I used to be a landscape painter and for three years I painted bodies of water. And I mean, there’s that blue again. There’s something to that.

Zoë: Interesting you brought up language because my next question is, how do you title your works?

Zoë: About the pieces that you actually collage, are those informed by anything?

(Here, Deborah is talking about an aspect of her work where she paints her sculptures bright colors underneath and lifts them off the floor slightly so it appears as if they are glowing from the base. The three small paintings on the wall are projecting a very faint box of color under and beside them.)

Deborah: My titles…I actually like titles, and I usually title a series, so this series is part of “Glyphs”, which I started maybe 8 years ago, and that series is called “Stand”, as in, things are standing, and this series is called “Standing Page 38: Photograph by Chris Yeager May 2012 Abstraks 39

Deborah: Well I’m sort of drawing with a scissor; they end up looking kind of like figures, sort of. It’s actually a vellum that has many layers of paint on it, so that’s actually kind of my source material, and I guess it’s what a lot of people do, but I kind of have a particular way of working and I make up these “rules”, so instead of drawing I cut and collage, and in the end that doesn’t even matter. It could’ve been done another way but that’s just how I do these.

They also create a little bit of relief so when I’m sanding it informs the way and where I’m sanding. These are kind of related to that glyph idea, or language, or marks that have some kind of significance.

Zoë: That’s actually why I asked; they look so specific and predetermined.

Deborah:Yeah, like in this piece, [referencing a work of hers from a pamphlet] there’s hundreds of these, and so each one is cut, and there’s just layer on layer on layer.

Zoë: Where are you from?

Deborah: I am from New Jersey, and I’ve been in Boston a long time.

Zoë: What is it about Boston that makes it want to stay?

Deborah: Good question. It’s something that my colleagues and friends always talk about. I think Boston is sort of underrated. I ended up being here just through life circumstances, and I feel like there’s a really - and it might be related to the academic world, and the fact that there’s so many colleges and universities, and that’s actually kind of a locus of where the art activity is located, like galleries and museums; it’s related to the academic institutions and it’s just a lot of really interesting people who are here and who are doing interesting work, so that kind of keeps me here, that community. For me, also, I’m very stimulated by the academic world, or by an intellectual community, and that’s definitely here. But that’s a really good question because a lot of us complain about being in Boston, like, ‘there’s not enough support’, and this is true, there is not enough support. Collectors here collect in other places, so that’s kind of a constant battle.

And here’s another thing: I have this great studio? I couldn’t replicate this, anywhere. I couldn’t replicate it if I tried to move somewhere in Somerville. Also, for me and a lot of people I know, Boston is close to New York, so if

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you’re an artist, you just go to New York and it’s just part of the conversation.

Zoë: Do you have a process of choosing color?

Deborah: My goal in these was to kind of do something different from [a past sculpture installation] which were kind of higher key colors, and each face is different, and so on. And I wanted to give myself the challenge of doing something very tight, color-wise and kind of gray, and this is what happened. So I did have an idea but it’s always really hard to stay strictly to an idea, somehow it kind of wants to do it’s own thing. I’ve heard writers talk about that idea before, they have a character and they have ideas of what they want that character to do but sometimes the character just wants to do its own thing.

Zoë: Definitely. Things evolve.

Deborah:Yeah, so that was my idea, to do this tight color thing and to do this kind of monochrome, illusion of light but actually painted. And then, I don’t know if this is interesting to you, but I came across this article of this Swiss architect who creates these kinds of unusual spaces. And this - [opens a magazine to an article. A perfect rectangular building sits alone in a field, a much larger scale version of one of Deborah‘s rectangular sculptures] Zoë: Oh wow!

Deborah: Exactly! This is just like my work. This is a chapel in the middle of a field big enough for a single person to go inside. That’s like a piece of architecture. So I sort of started thinking about how that’s probably a very dull kind of grey that’s affected by the light. His name is Peter Zumthor, he’s a Swiss architect, and it’s uncanny.

Zoë: Have you ever thought about these being vessels for something?

Deborah: I have, actually, but I haven’t figured out how to do that. I think it would be interesting to cut into them, open up the space inside. So not a vessel exactly but something where the inside is exposed.

Zoë:Yeah you’re all about what’s underneath.

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Deborah: Exactly. I’d love to do something where you open it, or there’s a cut out, and inside is painted the same color reflected underneath, so it’d glow from the inside.

I guess I would have to hacksaw it or something. I’ve also thought about making them much bigger.

Zoë: This is a tall order, but what do you think or hope these works inspire in others?

Deborah: Well if you’re an artist, you have to do this; it’s something in my mind. If I was a writer I’d be trying to write out this idea, but I’m not a writer, I’m a maker. I guess if the viewer has any connection or resonance in the work, that would by my goal. “Oh, this reminds me of blank”, or “oh, these would be interesting if they were outside and 20 feet tall.” you know? Or “these reminds me of Peter Zumthor, the architect”. Anything, anything at all. deborahgemma@earthlink.net www.deborahdavidson.net (Deborah will showing Standing See at the NKG Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave Suite 61, May 4 - 25, Opening reception Friday, May 4, 5-8pm www.NKGBoston.com

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