November 04–December 04 . 2011

Lydia Diemer . Stephanie DotsonShift and Weigh

LD: As an artist originally from a small Wisconsin town, landscape is a reoccur-ring influence in my work. Do you feel the same way, having grown up in Kansas?

SD: As a child, most of my impressions of the world were gained through vi-sual reproductions, schoolbooks and TV shows. One of my earliest art memories was watching a program on how Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was produced. They showed illustration techniques with drawings on transparent panels that allowed the artists to manipulate two-dimensional space in order to give it a diorama-like effect. This memory sparked a fascination with simulacra and the re-working of flat space to create landscapes that appear dramatic yet whimsical.

LD: Where I grew up in Wisconsin, the landscape is very textured and rich. Some of my early memories are from my home, where I surrounded myself with many tiny collections and ongoing architectural projects. My environment led me to an appreciation for mass-produced yet unique objects. It fostered an innate desire to whittle and fashion my own projects.

When you mention simulacra, I immediately think of your brushstrokes. You’ve described the physical strokes as a mechanical variation or a cartoon of a brush-stroke. It made me think of how that mimicry and sort of back-and-forth process is something I address in my practice as well. I’m playing with the migration from a drawing to a print that looks like a drawing – and then merging these ele-ments. Ultimately, I want to disguise the mark and the physical process, gaining flexibility by manipulating and collapsing what is fixed and malleable. Can you talk more about how you see that mimicry or where you engage simulacra in your work?

SD: I’m looking for this play between what is real and what is a stylized reality. I’m interested both in the experience of working with the subtleties of the me-dium and in the elements themselves that get lost in translation when a textural brushstroke is rendered as a flat illustration. Layering creates a faux space and simultaneously a real one due to the physical separation and the shadows be-tween brush strokes. I populate this space with marks that suggest structures, the accumulation of objects and looping, linear connections.

LD: We’ve also talked about a merging of physical space on the page and the opportunity to play with that shallow space. There are areas of dislocation or perplexity, where it’s unclear where one layer ends and another begins.

A conversation between Lydia Diemer and Stephanie Dotson.

Lydia DiemerStephanie Dotson

Shift and Weigh

SD: Yes, and in my own work I think the layered, flat rendering and glossy coat-ing over the more earthy, tactile wax creates a meeting of opposites. There’s a corollary with real space, of course. Where I live in Santa Barbara, I can see the ocean from one window and the mountains from another. It’s easy to lose touch with my own reality and feel like a kid looking at an ad in a magazine for some-place perfect and far away. In town, they scour the sidewalks in the morning, to wash away the grit from the previous night. No joke! Tourist spots like this one are two-faced. You can be caught up in the beauty but be looking at a scrubbed-up version of reality. In truth, the imperfections of a place are what make it feel like real life.

Something I’m really attracted to in your work is the lack of gloss – it has this great, almost folksy kind of texture to it.

LD: I think a lot about escapism in my work, from pill popping to casinos to mind-numbing labor to utopian plans. I tend to look toward the dark side, rather than the sterile persona of cleanliness. I’m attracted to the garbage sitting in a corner and the idea of investigating it further.

SD: Do you feel that by paying attention to the subtleties of the detritus you gain a better understanding about a place? Do you aim to highlight the ignored or forgotten?

LD: I look at it more in terms of scale and occlusion. There are the specifics, the actual moments and locations of discovery and collection. But in using a salvaged item, these minute details are filtered, re-contextualized or completely removed. The culling implies construction or potential. The whole collection is quotidian, commonplace – and the appearance of each is very malleable. I gath-er scraps and ephemera – paying attention to all things worn or set aside – as an aesthetic compulsion and a transformative springboard. This ties into the content of the work too, but less as a revelation of a particular place and more as the similarity or simultaneity of places.

Right now, I’m looking at the elements of grandeur as well as the shambles of my vicinity. This location, for example, with its history and establishment – I think about whoever the lumber baron (or iron magnate) was, or whatever prominence had once been here. The situation could be anywhere, existing as a pattern and system of transition on the decline. That sense of abundance fol-lowed by scarcity is what informs the scrappiness or roughness in my work. I love seeing how you’re able to use the slickness of certain surfaces to create a fog. There’s both clarity and fogginess.

SD: I connect with the concept of a fog. There is something that’s very uncom-fortable – you love it, but it can also distract you from really seeing. I was just

looking back at my work during college and noticed that this was a recurring theme. I addressed this tension of reconciling uneasiness in the midst of an ideal landscape in a very self-conscious way – feeling it was ridiculous to carry dark-ness when everything is so bright.

LD: I’m still looking for a colorful cheerfulness or glitz to all of the seedy societal realities in my work. When I hit a point of stasis or redundancy, I plot to leave my current location – not to exit, but to heighten and reengage my attention upon return.

Getting back to your impressions of Sleeping Beauty, the glorious and transpar-ent dream factory, do you think you’ll carry on with the complication of the myth and the actual in your upcoming projects?

SD: I often say I need to travel to Los Angeles or New York for some “grit.” It can be hard to see color and glitz that is genuinely cheerful (and not more fog) but I’ve moved so much since living in the Midwest that staying in the same place for a period of time is new, and it feels good. Lately I’ve been working on printed drawings of braided rugs that continue the line of thinking about the meeting of opposites. This work is more about the control and chaos implied by the image of the braid. The finished product celebrates the texture of the drawing without masking anything. That’s so Midwest of me.

Stephanie Dotson, Idlewild, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 10 x 8”

Lydia Diemer, Slide, 2011, mixed media collage on paper, 14 x 20”Lydia Diemer, Commerce Calls (detail), 2011, mixed media collage on paper, 11 x 22”

Stephanie Dotson, Hanging Pattern, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 12 x 12”Stephanie Dotson, Terroir, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 20 x 16”

Lydia Diemer, Stigmergic, 2011, mixed media collage on paper, 15 x 22.5”

Stephanie Dotson, Braid, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 12 x 12” Stephanie Dotson, Support, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 12 x 12”

About Lydia Diemer

Lydia Diemer (b. 1977, Ripon, WI) focuses on the interdependence of structures and detritus in the form of installations, prints, and collages. In 2005 she re-ceived an MFA in printmaking from the University of Iowa. Diemer has traveled extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, and México as well as Hong Kong and Macau (2007 Iowa Arts Council Mini Grant) for observation and research pur-poses as she conducts her practice of accretion, erasure, and material transfor-mation. In 2007 she was awarded a residency at Anchor Graphics at Columbia College in Chicago. She has exhibited at EFA Project Space (New York), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis, MN) and the Des Moines Art Center Downtown (Des Moines, IA). She currently lives and teaches in Duluth, MN.

CHRISTINA RAY is an innovative gallery and creative catalyst in New York. Our mis-sion, grounded by the concept of psychogeography, is to discover and present the most important contemporary artists exploring the relationship between people and places.

front cover: Lydia Diemer, Interstice (detail), 2011, mixed media collage on paper, 13 x 10”Stephanie Dotson, Resources for the Channel Islands, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 12 x 12”

back cover: Stephanie Dotson, Fountain, 2011, encaustic, ink and resin on panel, 12 x 12”

About Stephanie Dotson

Stephanie Dotson (b.1978, Lousiville, KY) works in a range of media and tech-niques including encaustic and resin paintings and three-dimensional wall-based installations. Subverting the storyline, she develops abstracted, opposing visual realities that parallel narratives in her own life. Dotson received an MFA in print-making from the University of Georgia in 2005 and has held solo exhibitions at Three Walls Gallery in Chicago, Vox Populii in Philadelphia, and Trace Gallery in Athens, GA. In 2004 she completed an artist residency at the Bemis Center (Omaha, NE) and she received full Joan Mitchell fellowships to residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in 2007 and the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida) in 2010. Dotson is Chair of the Art Department at the Santa Barbara City College in Santa Barbara, CA, where she lives and works.

Lydia Diemer, Lots, 2011, mixed media collage on paper, 12.5 x 16”

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