Lars Fisk '93 works on his latest marble sculpture at his Burlington studio
photograph by Shayne Lynn '93
Artists at work
Five alumni weigh in on the terrifying, inspiring, frustrating, fulfilling, and just plain hard-working life of an artist.
Lars Fisk ’93
Sculptor, Burlington, Vermont
PUBLIC WORKS
The faded sign on the brick building that houses Lars Fisk’s studio and cooperative work space reads “Burlington Street Department.” For lack of a better moniker (and because they kind of like the ambiguity), Fisk and fellow artists in the cooperative on Pine Street refer to their studio as “The Burlington Street Department” or, simply, “The Shop.” It’s rough space, seemingly suited for two functions in this world—housing a snowplow or an artist. But with a metal shop, machine shop, ceramics studio, and more on site, the cooperative continues to grow, nurtured in large part by Fisk with help from Burlington City Arts. Though he admits his “administration guy hat” is a time drain, Fisk says it’s worth it. “It is a real aspiration of mine to not just create my own artwork, but to create a whole community and place for the production of all kinds of artwork by many different people,” he says.
THE WORLD GOES ROUND
A street, a train, a barn, a tree, a Volkswagen, a tractor, a Mister Softee ice cream truck—Fisk began exploring the possibilities of sculptural spheres ten years ago and today calls the large balls he creates “sort of my bread and butter.” While conceiving a road or a vehicle as a sphere is a mental challenge, constructing the balls, which he now does primarily on commission, has pushed Fisk to continually develop new skills. “I had to learn how to use metal,” he says. “I had to learn how to sew vinyl. I had to learn how to make bricks out of mud so I could make my own curved bricks—and on and on and on from there. It was a lot of just winging it along the way, just learning as I went.”
NEW BAG
I’m kind of into the trash thing right now,” Fisk says, joking but just sort of. Through Taxter & Spengemann, the New York gallery that represents him, he recently sold a white marble sculpture that took the classic galvanized metal garbage can for inspiration. This summer, Fisk was hard at work transforming a piece of Champlain black marble quarried from Isle LaMotte into a sculpture of a full trash bag. “It was initially just an exercise in classical sculpture,” Fisk explains, “in rendering a form as defined underneath the folds of drapery. It’s a classic stonecutter’s problem to make this sort of rendering. To make it more contemporary, I’m translating this exercise in plastic and rendering trash as seen through a black bag.”
See more: taxterandspengemann.com
LAPD Fifth & Wall Station, Booking Bench, 2004, color coupler print, 48"x48"
Richard Ross ’67
Photographer; Santa Barbara, California
WORLD VIEW
While Richard Ross traveled in the Middle East this summer photographing for his collection titled “Architecture of Authority,” the walls of Beirut began to crumble. With “options disappearing fast,” Ross escaped to Syria with a driver from Damascus who knew the mountain roads. “It sounds sexy and dramatic,” he says, “but there was really no fear, just a lot of waiting.” The photographer and professor of art at the University of California-Santa Barbara has traveled the world exploring challenging places and situations in pursuit of his work, which often blurs the boundaries of photojournalism and fine art. Ross’s images from the prison at Guantanamo Bay illustrated the cover story of Time Magazine’s June 20, 2005 issue; they also appear in his “Architecture of Authority” collection, soon to be featured in an Aperture traveling exhibit.
ALL FOUR BURNERS
Ross’s interests as a photographer range widely. A recent book features his photos of bomb shelters; his “Fovea” collection gathers 35 years of images taken with a cheap plastic camera; “Leela,” couples hundreds of Ross’s portraits of his daughter with her own journal entries to create a brave look into the transition of adolescence. Working as principal photographer for the Getty Museum also numbers among Ross’s pursuits and it has led to fine art photography exploring items in storage—from the world’s natural history museums to a vast storeroom of vintage Nike gear. The photographer says he doesn’t try to separate his editorial and fine art work. “They’re pretty tight. One feeds the other. It’s like cooking. You don’t use just one burner; you get all four going at once.” And he doesn’t regret the loss of artistic control that being a photojournalist sometimes requires. “You learn to work with other people,” Ross says. “It gets beyond the pure ego of the artist.”
POLI SCI
“Barely an adolescent” when his parents dropped him off at Wills Hall, Ross was a 16-year-old Jewish kid from New York City paired with a roommate who “had never seen a Jew.” He had never been to Vermont before that trip, but quickly grew to love mid-1960s Burlington. A political science major and chemistry minor as a UVM undergraduate, Ross says the lessons of professors such as Donald Gregg and Raul Hilberg “influence me to this day.” That lasting impact paired with the influence of his wife, Cissy, a longtime journalist, to nudge Ross’s art to evolve “from work that was unabashedly beautiful to work that is more politically active.”
See more: richardross.net
LA Freeway II, 2006, acrylic on panel, 4.5” X 5”
Kate Davis Caldwell ’98
Painter, Stockton, New Jersey
INSTANT GRATIFICATION
Inspiration for the current direction in Kate Davis Caldwell’s work, primarily landscapes painted on a small scale, comes from the look and spontaneity of Polaroid pictures. “They provide instant gratification,” Caldwell says. “There’s a painterly quality to the imperfections, and they can really act as little studies when I get back to the studio.” The “unexpected and irregular” images that arise in pictures taken with digital cameras or cell phones also intrigue the artist. This new path in Caldwell’s work, which will be on display in a November show at Philadelphia’s Bridgette Mayer Gallery, took form in August 2005 when she did a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson. Surrounded by fellow visual artists and writers, Caldwell was reinvigorated. “It shakes you up a little bit, gets you out of your environment,” she says.
PLANET WAVES
Caldwell’s painting career launched swiftly as a UVM undergrad. After Stephen Doll, curator of Burlington’s Doll-Anstadt Gallery, spotted her work hanging at the Daily Planet restaurant, he organized a solo show that sold out. In retrospect, Caldwell says she isn’t sure she realized just how important that fast start was. “It really propelled me,” she says. “Without that to give me hope, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to start on a career as an artist.” Art Professor Frank Owen was also a major source of support and inspiration as the then English major began finding herself taking more and more art classes. “Frank stressed finding your voice and style, being open to everything,” Caldwell says. For her that meant abstract and boldly graphic work that combined painting and collage. Though that direction proved successful for years, she was ready for a change as her interest in Polaroid-inspired images began to emerge. “You get to a point where you have faith that everything evolves and gets better and better. I’m never satisfied that this body of work is the body of work.”
DOWN TO WORK
Home is in Stockton, New Jersey; the studio, in nearby Lambertville. Caldwell says that she finds getting in the studio early and often is the best way to build creative energy. “It all has to do with momentum,” she says. “The earlier I get there, the better. If I haven’t been in the studio for a while, the apprehension just builds up. Working spurs more creativity.” That said, the artist has learned to recognize the moments when she’s better off turning up the radio and turning to more mundane tasks like cutting mats or cleaning the studio. With a laugh, she says, “Sometimes it’s best to walk away before things go up in flames.”
See more: mayerartconsultants.com/artist_davis
x.6, 2005, mixed media on carton, about 15 X 20 cm
Gerrit Gollner ’98
Painter, printmaker, writer
Cologne, Germany
SNOW TO STUDIO
Raised in Austria and the United States, Gerrit Göllner initially came to UVM as a Nordic ski team recruit. But as her academic horizons broadened at the University, Gollner found it increasingly difficult to dedicate the time and energy varsity athletics demand. “So I stopped,” she says, “which was as dramatic an act as switching careers, identity, lifestyle, and community.” Gollner took a break from school to reconsider, work, and to travel for six months through India, Nepal, and Tibet. In the East, she found an epiphany. “It wasn’t even an idea, nor a question, rather a conviction. It was clear I would study art, and with absolutely no idea of what this meant, nor having had any real exposure to art in the past.” A return visit to UVM and a talk with art professor Ed Owre would help solidify her decision to re-enroll. Göllner says she found lessons many places during her undergraduate years, from Owre and fellow art professors such as Bill Davison and Kathleen Schneider, to then Nordic coach Bruce Cranmer, to the fellow students and night custodians who worked into the morning hours at Williams Hall. “Inspiration is a wonderful thing,” she says. “It is a meeting rather than something given from one to another. It is as if a sleeping memory is brought forward. It is only a matter of being open for this sort of a meeting to take place.”
IMPULSE, INTUITION
Göllner has proven fearless in her openness to exploring new media. Drawing and painting have been her primary pursuits, but she’s also been a printmaker, created artists books, and harbors a curiosity towards sculpture and installation art. Writing also increasingly draws her attention. Across forms of expression, a common theme drives much of Göllner’s work. “I am intrigued with impression and, most importantly, in keeping true to this initial impulse before it is digested, figured, in the form of an understanding. This may sound poetic, but actually it is so basic for everyone, that it is often looked over. In this sense, the work is very impulsive, intuitive, and any knowing comes after the fact.”
LIVE AND WORK
In the past year, Göllner has left behind a museum job that could have turned into a career path and focused exclusively on her own art. With a supportive gallery behind her, Göllner’s work is going strong; she has a major exhibit in Cologne in the fall and two upcoming shows in Italy. The artist also teaches at a private art school and keeps life simple with her home in a small storefront in Cologne—the front part is her studio; the back, her living quarters. “I live and work simultaneously,” she says. “I have it quite well.”
See more: cicognanigalerie.com
What a Girl Wants, 2004, collage, 50"x59"
Karin Weiner ’95
Collage artist, sculptor
Warren, Vermont via NYC
THE DAY JOB
“Terrifying,” Karin Weiner says with a laugh as she remembers taking the leap toward making her living as an artist. “It can be frustrating because New York is so competitive and everybody you meet calls themselves an artist. But I was motivated by the idea and I was pretty dedicated to making it work.” Other pursuits help make ends meet, Weiner says, but the bulk of her time is at the studio, and for the past two years her art has been her main source of income. “I just kind of bit the bullet and realized that if I didn’t invest everything and take a lot of risks that I would never achieve anything in the art world.” Graduate work at Hunter College followed, and soon after Weiner found a medium in collage that not only felt right to her, but also sold well in the gallery.
WAY OF THE SCISSORS
After collecting National Geographic for years, Weiner found the courage to start cutting them apart. Today, an entire wall of her studio is covered with bookshelves of the venerable yellow-bound magazine, old encyclopedic sets of wildlife pictures, and vintage craft books, all fodder for collage art. Originally a painter, Weiner began to find the medium restrictive during her graduate school years. “The collage just seemed like a way for me to obsessively observe stuff. I could cut out materials and reorganize it and put it in a structure and a pattern that made sense to me” she says. “It felt like a medium that communicates a lot better and talks about what I’m interested in in a much clearer way.”
HOMECOMING
In mid-September, Weiner was juggling preparation for a move back to Vermont (where she spent a number of her childhood years and worked post-UVM at the Vermont Studio Center) with preparation for four upcoming shows: Halifax, Nova Scotia, in November; New York in January; Los Angeles in April; and New York again in late spring. Any worries about stepping away from the daily life of the NYC art world are minimal, outweighed by the positives of getting back to Vermont: “Wherever I’m happiest, I’ll make the best work,” she says. In addition to her new home base, Weiner also anticipates further exploring new directions in her art. She is drawn to creating more sculptural and installation work, though she admits it’s been a harder sell in the gallery than her collages. Still, she’s determined to make it work as she begins to create her next show, a full floor-to-ceiling installation. “God only knows how I’m going to make that thing,” Weiner says with a mix of humor and honesty, “but we’ll see.”
(for UVM staff)