Candace Compton Pappas
Landing
September 9 – October 18, 2014
The new show at WSG gallery is a collection of paintings and sculpture by Michigan artist Candace Compton Pappas. Candace’ work is a delicious combination of subtle surface textures and paints, resulting in pieces that are so hard not to touch! I did a little interview with her so you can get an inside view of her process and some of the things she thinks about in her work. Come see the show! It’s up until October 18, 2014.
123 of 300+, 55 x 70″, inks and acrylics on canvas on board
VM: Could you tell us a little about your highly textured surfaces and how you came to discover your process for your wall-hung work?
CCP: I love exploring materials, their limits, their capabilities perhaps as much as I the imagery. My surfaces are most often, although not always, heavily textured. I love a rich smooth surface where the paint slides around as much as a heavily textured built-up ground. I use anything that will work, gesso, house paint, sand, plaster, clay, cement, dirt, glues . . . I’m not too too sad when pieces go to the dump . . I’m getting used to it and it makes the process more of an adventure.
Chair III, acrylics inks and oils on canvas, 38″ x 50″ ($4200)
VM: You also have sculptural pieces in this show. When did you first start making sculpture and do you approach that work in a different manner than you do your paintings?
CCP: I went to the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972 and studied ceramic sculpture, I learned how to slip cast clay into plaster molds. Over the years that I have painted I have consistently made “things” as well. A few years ago I discovered cement and it is so much fun to play with, and has amazing depth. I can’t keep my hands off it, so, I press it into molds (my houses and vessels), I hand form it (my spheres) and I trowel it into frames and paint on it. Delicious! I don’t separate my process of “making” a painting or a construction. They both involve an element of building, constructing and imagining.
Water Table, 18″ x 18″ x 30″ cement, steel, water $950
VM: You earn your living as an artist – doing major art fairs, as well as showing at galleries and co-owning a gallery where you are represented. How do you prepare differently for a gallery show than for an art fair?
CCP: Art Fairs are quite an experience. I feel new to it, although I have done them for a few years now. They have been quite poo-pooed by some galleries I was with, “if you do Art Fairs your reputation will suffer” but I think of them as public art. They are very hard work, but I like doing smaller pieces, I like selling the work, I like meeting the people, spacing out on the throngs, being outdoors, getting to know fellow artists. It is exhausting and a most interesting live art exchange. I love having a 10 x 10 space which I have total control over to show the work. I would like to push myself to indulge more in the “public art” aspect of it, challenging the space and context to create a 10 x 10 piece.
My gallery work is not un-similar, although it is an opportunity to show larger work, I love painting large. And galleries simply attract, not always, but often, a different audience. One that takes gallery art very seriously and is possibly interested in owning and investing in work on a larger scale. It is indoors and nicely lit and there is a kind of elegance about the whole presentation that sets the work of with a different reverence.
Considering Home, acrylic, inks and oils on board 38″ x 38″ ($2400)
VM: Working on ‘300+’ was a long process and a very meditative one, at that. Knowing that sometimes it takes perspective to be able to verbalize this, I’m going to ask anyway…..How do you think the process of making it and the painting, overall, have affected your art-making and other areas of your life?
CCP: The process of making 300+ was a game changer. I can not remember making art that came so naturally. Making time in my day to paint 5 – 10 birds, lighting a candle, listening, watching the birds as they form and land in the paintings. It was a gift, this painting, because I did not struggle with it. It – the process and the work- held a completeness to it from the very beginning. What questions I had, what discomfort/sadness/elation/