Creative Growth Gallery Director Sarah Galender Meyer sits down with Studio Special Projects Coordinator Kathleen Henderson to gain insight into artists Nicole Storm and Ron Veasey, who are featured in The Rainbow Two.
Kathleen, you’ve been working with Ron and Nicole in one of the smaller classrooms for a while now. Exactly how long have you been working with them, and how did that come about?
I've been working with both Nicole and Ron for about six years. But increasingly, I’m working with them more intensely. When we started the new quiet classroom, we were trying to decide who would be in it, and I took that opportunity to choose the artists I was most excited to work with. It was a great opportunity for me to work with people who I knew could really benefit from some more individualized attention.
Can you talk a bit about their work and how they’ve each developed over time as artists?
Nicole’s work in some ways hasn't changed that much. It was hard because she moves around so much—moving around the Studio seems to be part of her process and a lot of her work went missing. And she likes to work on found materials, so those found materials would pile up and then they'd be nowhere. And I think even at one point, you and I were like, “Where's Nicole's portfolio?” and there didn't appear to be one because her work was kind of everywhere and nowhere. So, in working with her in the new classroom I could say, “Okay, here's this board. We're going to work on this board.” And then at the end of the day, I would have to go find it. But that was the benefit of having someone focused on her. And then also saying, “Instead of working on this newspaper, why don't you work on this thing which is archival?”
For Ron, I feel like he's such a good artist. He really has benefitted from having greater resource material.
Can you talk about his source material?
He would look at source material from the library. He also used to use fashion magazines that were around, like many artists at Creative Growth. When I came here, I felt like there weren’t very comprehensive resources, which is why I started to establish the library so that people could look at all kinds of things. Because if you're just drawing figures from fashion magazines, you're only drawing certain figures. That's why I gave Ron that book of South African photography, so that he could see people that look like him. There's also a lot of gender fluidity in that book, which he seems really drawn to. And that really changed his work. Just by giving him different source materials and an opportunity to work larger, he began to scale up and make those large, abstract decisions.
Ron and Nicole are two artists with very strong artistic voices, but with very different aesthetics. Obviously their processes are different, as well. For each, can you describe their process and then how you support that process as their instructor?
For Nicole, her process seems to be a gathering of information. It's a little unclear and a little mysterious exactly what information she's gathering, but it is a process and I can see that it's real. She often looks at clipboards or she'll go over to William Scott's area and look at his poster. She seems to be maybe mimicking letters; her notations are small, repetitive marks. There seems to be a quality that’s almost trance-like—she’s humming while she's making them and often she'll stop to make a large movement and then she'll go back in and keep working. It's a full-body thing. It's not really like any artist that I know of. Supporting Nicole is tricky, because she needs to move around. Supporting her is allowing her to do that because it's an important part of her process. But also making sure that it's not a hindrance in the Studio, because sometimes she'll put a painting where someone will trip or she'll set up her big boards with her markers and her papers and her bags and her tea, and it's where somebody sits every Monday at 9:30am and that's really disruptive. So supporting her is trying to give her a little room and then trying to bring her in and say, “Okay, let's go up in this room where there's lots of space for you.” And you know, I literally do a song and dance. I sing and dance to get her to come to class, which is fun and she ends up liking it. It’s kind of a game we play.
Ron has a completely different approach. He spends many, many hours thinking about what he wants to do. Sometimes it'll take him half a day. He'll have a book and he'll look through it for three hours. And so the way I support that is to stay out of his way and let him do that, knowing that's just the time it takes for him to make the decisions. He's so fond of this particular book [of South African photography] and I'm trying to figure out why. I have brought in other books of photography and depicting people of color, but he just really likes this one book. It’s kind of great when you find something that can change your life. And really, it has changed his work. It builds upon his earlier figurative work—images of couples or people from fashion magazines. He would really pare down the gestures and put them in his incredibly strange palette.
So what happens after he zeroes in on a photograph that he wants to paint?
He draws it out with pencil first, and sometimes it's an odd composition and I think it’s going to be all scrunched up or the figure is going to be pushed to the side, but of course I don't say any of those things. That’s also my job—to stay out of it. And then he makes it work every time and in such a weird and wonderful way. Sometimes he'll start over, he'll erase it all and start over. But not very often. He just goes for it. But it takes a long time. He works very slowly. And he also, like Nicole, needs to leave his piece and walk away for breaks. But then it really picks up. He inks it with a sharpie, which he ends up painting over and at that point it's pretty locked in—you know what it's going to be. And then he chooses his paints. He goes over to the paints cabinet and is very self-motivated.
Does Nicole ever hesitate when she’s making work? Does she take as long to think and process?
I don't think there is much hesitation for her because her work is a continuation of how she moves through the world. She seems to need a certain amount of time to work on the materials that she brings from home, which is a big bag of old newspapers and calendars. It seems to me that she needs a part of her day to do that. Yesterday, she worked so hard on these big pieces. She makes big sweeping marks and she moves those heavy boards around. Sometimes she'll stop to put one leg in the air. You know, the gestures that she makes on her pieces, she mimics in her body. So they are very much like extensions of her performance. It's really fantastic to watch, but that is not to say that she isn't making formal choices. I think she's making really intuitive formal choices about the piece. I think there is a sort of bias that people have about folks with disabilities—the idea that they're not making those kinds of formal decisions.
Yes, it seems like there is a romance with the idea that there is an “urgent need” for artists with disabilities “to get it out” and somehow that translates to making work very quickly. How does Nicole relate to her finished work? Clearly she likes to have some kind of control over it, because sometimes she hides it in places that only she knows about.
Yeah, she likes to place it around the Studio which seems to me that she's trying to make the whole Studio and the people in it, her work—not just the workspace. And often I'm dragging her work around and she's made me into a copy of her. Like, now I'm doing my Nicole Storm. I'm carrying her bags and her paintings and I'm going from class to class and suddenly I realize, “How did she do this to me?!”
She does seem to have that power over people… Let’s talk about color. Both artists use color in very specific ways. Can you talk first about Ron’s choices? For instance, do you have any insight as to how he’s translating a black-and-white photograph into color?
Often the photographs he’s looking at are black and white and yet he has a palette that runs towards really vivid saturated colors. He doesn't mix color or shade and sometimes he sticks closely to his resource material and sometimes he doesn't, so it's hard for me to know why he chooses what he chooses. But you know, he never talks and I've been working with him for years. So, that's the mystery of it. In some ways it’s nice to know that I'll never know.
Nicole has a palette that she adores. She loves pinks and purples and oranges and dark, moody blues. Sometimes she will find another palette and you know, just do some magical brown painting or something. She does this thing sometimes where she puts the paint on the floor and then she takes her brush and rubs it around on the floor, using the floor as her palette. And then she goes straight from the floor right up the piece in one fluid movement and she repeats that. It's like she's connecting the floor to her piece. I also think she's very sensual and I think that's a lot of what she's doing is just experiencing things in a really sensual way. I think that also must be what Ron is doing because he has certain brushes that he likes. That choice of brush suggests a desire to not only to get the piece the way you want it, but also the tactile pleasure of painting with a brush. So they actually share that. They’re such different artists and they make such different work, but they’re both painters.
For Ron, what is it about photography that you think he is particularly drawn to—what’s the appeal?
I think that he chooses images that have a lot of gesture and an edginess to them.
I think he's really drawn to that. And then whatever image he chooses, he takes that gesture and edge and bumps it up a notch. So if somebody's standing in a contrapposto pose, he exaggerates it. And if they're turning their head to the right, he has them turn just a little bit more. Their eyes are always doing something really strange. You know, Ron's line is really descriptive of form, and when you get to watch him work, you realize that a lot of the shapes that he's making are these really interlocked abstract shapes that are simultaneously really flat and really voluminous. Maybe that’s what he likes about the photographs.
And the eyes are usually yellow! Any idea where that’s coming from?
No idea. There's no way to know but that's the mystery of Ron because he doesn't have conversations. I don't know what he likes outside of the Studio.
He definitely pulls out the drama. And yet he’s the most subdued person. How does Nicole describe her work? I think you found recently that there's no straight answer, which is amazing, but is there some consistency over the years that you've heard from her?
Well, I think when she's talking about her work, she talks about the memories she has and people she knows. She won’t address the work, she won’t say, “I love that line. I love that color. I love that shape.” She’ll point to it and talk about a friend she once knew or cheesecake she once ate. You know, it's all about her experiences that have been abstracted into the linework. So I think when she's taking those notes and talking to herself and humming, she's talking about someone and some event. So I guess there is that consistency in her work of including her memories.
You mentioned earlier that part of her process would include folding things and stashing them in corners and around the studio. Recently, in this effort to maintain the integrity of her work so that we can use it in installations and simply have some solid pieces that don't get folded up and hidden, we gave her those boards. What has her response been to the boards—did she give you a hard time?
You know, she loves that these big pieces are coming her way—she likes working big. In the past, she’s stolen (for lack of a better word) a lot of supports that we use in classes for other artists because she likes working big. But she also doesn't like to be followed and she doesn't like anybody to be on her back. She wants to do her own thing.
Do Ron and Nicole interact at all?
No. Well, once in a while Nicole will knock over Ron’s painting, by accident. And he’s generous and nice about it. Ron doesn't seem to interact with anybody—he's pretty chill.
Has working with them influenced your own work or your process in any way?
Nicole seems to be enjoying herself so much, so I want to have as much fun as she's having. I was working on a series of drawings around the financial collapse. And I was looking at the business pages and just drawing from them the same way she draws from them, and just not really looking and just making those marks and it was so much fun. Ultimately, it ended up not being what I wanted to do, but it was an interesting experiment and I could see why she likes doing it—it’s very satisfying.
Tell me why you're excited for this show for both of them. Actually, are you excited for this show?!
I'm super excited for the show. You know, I think it's critical. Nicole loves the spotlight, she loves when people look at her work. I think she really likes her work. Sometimes, you know, there were a couple weeks where I was just like, “God, I give up, I can't keep following Nicole around the Studio, I've got all these other people and projects to work on.” So I've had to find a balance of letting her go and getting back to the other challenges of the Studio. I feel like these shows are an accomplishment for her because she's done all this amazing work. Also an accomplishment for me, because I've been following her around the Studio. I didn't make the work, but in some ways, I helped make it happen. And the same for Ron—getting him new resource materials, going to the library on my bike, making the extra effort and seeing it pay off for somebody’s development. And also because they are such amazing paintings and I love looking at them and I can't wait to see them all together. To see them all together and see them have that conversation and see how that all plays out. To see them across the hall from each other, you know, across the room. It's gonna be fantastic. I also think people are really gonna love them.
I think so, too. Well, I hope so. I feel like we’ve both been waiting for the big discovery.