Inside the Artist's Studio by Joe Fig

Author:Joe Fig [Fig Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2015-04-17T23:00:00+00:00

1. Drew Beattie (b. 1952), American. Painter and sculptor whose early work was part of the collaborative Beattie and Davidson and whose more recent work juxtaposes flat surfaces with three-dimensional materials.

2. Pearl Albino is an art advisor specializing in contemporary painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture.

Byron Kim: July 14, 2014

2014, Mixed media, 11 x 11 x 91/2 inches

Byron Kim

Gowanus, Brooklyn / July 14, 2014

To start off, can you please tell me a bit about your background?

I was born in La Jolla, California. I grew up there and in Wallingford, Connecticut. I went to a small private high school, La Jolla Country Day School. It did have a pretty good art department by virtue of having a couple of good art teachers. William Goodell, at first, and then Carolanne Gano. The thing that I still take from her is that she would say, “Just start. If you don’t know what to do, just get started.” That advice has been really helpful because that tends to be my particular problem.

However, I wasn’t that much into art when I was a kid. In fact, I wasn’t that much into art in high school, either. I didn’t start to think about becoming an artist until after college.

What was an early art piece you made that got recognition?

Even though I didn’t have much interest in art, while at high school I did make a sculpture that was installed on the campus of the high school until just a few years ago. It was a four-part sculpture depicting growth, this progression of a plantlike form. I did it as my senior project.

Where did you go to undergraduate school?

I went to Yale. At first I studied science and did most of the pre-med, but I liked to study things that were difficult for me. That’s how I ended up becoming an English major, because I found it really challenging. I graduated in 1983. I did take some studio art classes. One art professor at Yale, Robert Reed,1 was really quite inspired. I’m so grateful to be doing critiques alongside him thirty-five years later.

Did you go to graduate school?

I went to Washington University for a semester, and it just didn’t work out. I had gotten into Skowhegan2 in the summer of ’86. I went to Skowhegan without really knowing that I wanted to be an artist, but once I got there, that summer changed everything. I realized this is what I wanted to do. Bill Jensen3 was on the faculty that summer. He had a slow, thoughtful, uncompromising way of looking at things, which affects my studio life and my own way of teaching to this day.

Was there a particular piece you made where you thought, This might be something I want to continue to pursue?

When I was at Yale I wanted to be a poet, but I understood how daunting the task would be. By chance, during my senior year I took an art history class called Art of the 1970s. Getting introduced to conceptual art really opened things up for me, and somehow I saw that as an alternative to poetry.

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