Category Archives: Artist Interview

Studio Visit: Allie Pisarro-Grant

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Allie Pisarro-Grant is an artist I was very delighted to have met here in New York.  She attended RISD and has been working in New York City for the past 7 years. One day while commuting to work I saw Allie holding a Pearl Paint bag, so I decided to talk to her. Since then I’ve caught her work at The Brucennial and we’ve been friends ever since. She also coincidentally showed last New Years with some of my friends in Milwaukee. Recently we met up to do a studio visit and I got to know her work a little better.

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Studio Visit: Trudy Benson and Russell Tyler

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Trudy Benson and Russell Tyler are a married, power-painting couple. I first found out about Trudy maybe 3 years ago. My friend friend showed me her work via the internet and I was very impressed.  A couple months after that I went to New York and got to check out her show at Freight + Volume and was blown away.  Recently I got in touch with Trudy to see if I could come visit her studio- I took the opportunity to check out her work and as well as Russell’s.

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Studio Visit: Leon Reid IV’s Public Art

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I stopped by Leon Reid IV‘s studio in Greenpoint to see what he’s been up to lately. He’s been pretty busy. Last month, he installed “100 Story House” a public art piece created in collaboration with Julia Marchesi. And he released a new sculpture series less than two weeks ago. On top of all of that, he’s in the midst of raising funds for “A Spider Lurks in Brooklyn”, his proposed project to put a giant spider between the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge during October of 2014 (you can get involved with the project here). So I was pretty psyched that he was able to make time to show me around. Leon’s been creating public art in some form or another for eighteen years now, and his studio was full of past projects and concept sketches.

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Artist Interview: Rachel de Joode

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Rachel de Joode is a Dutch artist living in Berlin. Recently, she’s produced a prolific number of sculptural works that break down common perception through the use of unique materials, concepts, and execution. Her work is patently of our time, drawing on themes of technology, isolation, and highly saturated levels of information exchange. But her commentary remains singular, even in the face of some fairly evident influences. De Joode is also the co-founder and art director of  META magazine.

We asked the artist a few questions about what she’s been up to lately and the various processes surrounding her sculpture-making. You can find her thoughtful answers after the jump.

All images courtesy of the artist.

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Documentary Watch: Allison Schulnik Studio Visit

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Allison Schulnik Beautiful/Decay Studio Visit from Beautiful/Decay Magazine on Vimeo.

The Queen of lush and juicy paint Allison Schulnik opened up her studio to Beautiful/Decay and Visual Creatures to give our readers insight into the world of sad hobo clowns and her painting and animation process. Allison discusses how her paintings inform her animations and vice versa, the long history of artists in her family, and how Los Angeles allows artists to have quiet time in the studio yet have a community.

Photographing the Yakuza Crime Family

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As part of our ongoing partnership with Feature Shoot, Beautiful/Decay is sharing Greta Rybus’ interview with Photographer Anton Kusters.

Anton Kusters is a Belgium-based photographer specializing in long-term projects. In 2011, he published his first photobook on the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime families, that he photographed for two years.

Tell us about your Yakuza project.
‘YAKUZA is a personal visual account of the life inside an inaccessible subculture: A traditional Japanese crime family that controls the streets of Kabukicho, in the heart of Tokyo, Japan. Through 10 months of negotiations with the Shinseikai, my brother Malik and I became one of the only Westerners ever to be granted this kind of access to the closed world of Japanese organized crime.

‘With a mix of photography, film, writing and graphic design, I try to share not only their complex relationship to Japanese society, but also the personal struggle of being forced to live in two different worlds at the same time; worlds that often have conflicting morals and values. It turns out not to be a simple black versus white relationship, but most definitely one with many, many, many shades of grey.’

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Photos of Bedouin Communities Living Amidst Second World War Minefields

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As part of our ongoing partnership with Feature Shoot, Beautiful/Decay is sharing Greg Funnell’s interview with Photographer Andrew Youngson.

Andrew Youngson’s series, The Devil’s Garden, documents Bedouin communities living amidst Second World War minefields in Egypt’s Western Desert. It is estimated that approximately 17 million unexploded anti-personnel and anti-tank mines; artillery shells; bombs dropped by aircraft and machine gun, small arms and mortar rounds remain beneath the sand.

The Western Desert is an area rich in natural resources but whereas areas allocated for luxury beach resorts and Petroleum Company compounds have been cleared of unexploded ordnance, Bedouin land has not benefited from such programmes. Official records of incidents involving UXO have not been kept until recently but it is believed thousands of Bedouin have been killed or injured since the end of the Second World War.

Youngson is based in London and his new book, Aida, will be published by Black Box Press in July 2012.

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Artist Interview: Jeremiah Maddock

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Jeremiah Maddock is a hard guy to pin down. Many have spoken of him as some sort of ghost- a shadowy figure that passes through bars and cafes with a suitcase full of muted drawings, and an unknown past. This legend surrounding the artist, who lives -most of the time- in New York City, creating richly patterned mixed media works populated with ghoulish creatures and tramps, is likely a product of his obvious lack of desire for external validation. It’s clear that Maddock, who has no personal website, maintains a very pure process; he is interested more in the act of creating -and the motivations behind such an act- than any finished product.

I caught up with Jeremiah in-between his extensive travels throughout the interior of the country. Read the interview after the jump, which includes the artist’s thoughts on steez-biting Mayans, art fairs with Josh Keyes in high school, and collaborating with the dead.

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