Published on Saturday, February 6, 2021 by Agitator Co-operative

Agitator Member Updates, February 2021

by Agitator members

Andrea Kaspryk: In the spring and summer of 2020, with the pandemic lockdown in force, I had time to undertake a much needed re-organization of my home studio work space to paint and to go through and organize my art supplies. And I also had time to organize all my works on paper (drawings, prints, photos, photo references) in twelve portfolio books as well in five archival boxes of varying size.

In fall I finally had the extra time and energy with the pandemic lockdown to work in earnest on new paintings, starting with preparatory sketches in graphite and making color sketches of them. My hope was that with many preparatory sketches and working out alternative color schemes I could paint more effectively and efficiently, and this mostly turned out to be the case. I started several series of paintings, most in the medium size to large rectangles from three to four foot in width and height. And I have written about these paintings in my contribution to this issue of Agitator.

I had hoped to prepare new paintings as a contributing painter the next show I would curate at Agitator Gallery in fall 2020, but it turned out our gallery shut down in mid-March, and we left our former physical space in August 2020. I was disappointed, because I had started to create a new series of paintings, and I thought on my third round of curation at Agitator, I was looking forward to show many more and much more effective and completed paintings than at my previous two shows there.

More recently in December 2020 and January 2021, since I’m interested in figurative and narrative painting, I began to read about Renaissance painters, starting to dip into Giorgio Vasari’s classic art history Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568) and other books and articles associated to these artists.

I have also been taking ceramics classes at Lill Street Art Center since the pandemic started with the goal of learning how to hand-build human figurines from about one to two feet in size. The usual figure and portrait painting classes I take there have been cancelled, and drop-in figure drawing sessions have also been cancelled, or gone online. From my perspective, these online figure drawing sessions are not my cup of tea: they are disappointing because the camera limits and distorts the figure so much.

At my Lill Street Art ceramic class, with much help from a teacher, I managed to complete one figurine who was designed to match the pose of a figure from one of my paintings. This quest has gotten me into courses where I learn about the basic skills for hand-building forms with clay (coils or slabs) and technical properties of working with clay, like waiting for the moist clay to dry, before undertaking more work on it. It can make an artist feel like something of a Frankenstein monster creator, making the main parts of the figure, head, torso, arms, legs, hands and feet, and then joining them together. And also taking apart the figure in order to hollow out its parts.

It looks like the pandemic lockdown may begin to ease this summer, so I, as I imagine many artists with more time on their hands, without the usual social whirl and routine of social meetings, outings, gatherings, art openings, closings, are hoping that more of their artwork can be completed and begun before then.

Gretchen Hasse: In late January, I finished the six-page biographical comic It Is Okay, a collaboration with my partner Camilo Gonzalez. The story reflects on his early childhood in Cuba and later involvement in the Chicago punk scene. I wrote it as a compilation of many anecdotes he’s told me over the years we’ve been together. Later this year, It Is Okay will be published in Springfield’s Activator music magazine, and hopefully in lots of other places too.

I’ll be working on more comics soon. In the coming months, I’m returning to my ongoing graphic novel, Freaks’ Progress. Activator has been publishing Chapter 1 of this comic in serialized form since August of 2020. Freaks’ Progress is my magnum opus, and I’m eager to use my Spring Sequestering Time to dig deep into it.

Josh Mei: Since October, and especially since I began my ten-day Inktober challenge, I have been working on various collages. But I always made sure the collages involved some degree of drawing to it, not just cutting and pasting. Whether it’s sketching the figure, designing the ground, or playing with form and composition, creating these collages made me feel extremely joyful. It also liberates my creativity and perspective. Rilke said it best in the first stanza of his poem “Magic”: “From indescribable transformation originate / Amazing shapes. Feel! Trust! / We suffer often: To ashes turn our flames; / Yet art can set on fire the dust.”

Due to safety reasons during this pandemic, I did not once visit an art store. Nor is there a need to because I already have so many unused supplies at home, so much untapped potential. Rather than buying more supplies to feel good, the pandemic taught me to be resourceful and use what I already have. And what I have are newspapers, magazines, and art catalogues that I, admittedly, hoarded over the years and never looked at until the past few months. So much material! The possibilities are endless! If I were to leave them unseen and unused in a dusty corner, then I might as well cut things out and create. In the end, it is amazing to witness the synergy of different unrelated elements transfigured into a unified whole, like dust set aflame.