Emerging artists Abby Reczek, Donald Golden and Mamie Biven highlight 4 Bridges this weekend
The 4 Bridges Arts Festival comes to the First Tennessee Pavilion this weekend, and for the past thirteen years has been sponsoring emerging artists. “The Emerging Artist program is an opportunity for chosen artists to show at the festival free of charge,” says festival director Michelle Kimbrell with the Association for Visual Arts. “These are artists who are not represented by a gallery or who are just emerging in their career. It is important to us at AVA to help artists get their careers off the ground.”
The Pulse sat down the three emerging artists profiled at this weekend's festival to learn more about their work.
Abby Reczek
Taking pottery beyond the traditional with lightness and brightness
The Pulse: Paint for me a portrait of yourself as an artist and how you got interested in your medium.
Abby Reczek: I am a 26-year-old potter, raised in southeast Pennsylvania, who has always considered myself an artist. It wasn’t until college, however, that I discovered clay. My interest started while I attended a state school, but started developing into a lifestyle when I transferred to Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. I originally was drawn to clay because it was fun. I loved coming into the studio and getting messy from head to toe. I loved the feel of the clay as I manipulated it. These things I still love, but so much more has developed since those initial college classes.
After graduating I was grateful for the practicality of pottery. Making functional art can be easier to make a living at, as well as fulfilling my need to feel like what I was doing had a purpose. I decided to find more places that would help me grow as a potter after school. That is how I ended up in Virginia. I completed a year-long residency in 2013 and moved to Floyd, Virginia right after to do a two-year apprenticeship with professional potter, Silvie Granatelli. Since completing the apprenticeship last fall I have started a studio in my home. Every day I am grateful to make work that I love that goes out into the world with someone who will love it and use it daily.
TP: How do you bring the pottery to life?
AR: I make functional, porcelain pottery. I use the potter’s wheel for most of my work and carve designs into the clay before it is fired. My carvings are derived from nature, looking frequently at mushrooms and the lines that are created by the gills underneath the cap. I enjoy taking complex images and simplifying them into the line drawings that I create with the carvings. The carvings meander along the body of the pot and are highlighted by the light green and blue glazes. It’s interesting to me to take something that sounds unattractive—like a mushroom—and transform it into a visual that displays beauty.
TP: What is unique about your art?
AR: These aren’t your typical pots. Instead of the darker colors of traditional America pottery that most are used to, these porcelain pots are light and bright. They have a delicacy to them that, unlike grandma’s china, is also substantial in weight so that the owner is encouraged to use them as much as possible.
TP: Do you have any mentors you wish to thank?
AR: Silvie Granatelli is an amazing woman and potter who has taught me so much about clay and how to make a living at it. My parents have constantly encouraged and supported me. I’m sure they worry pottery is not necessarily lucrative, but they never project that onto me.
TP: What direction do you see yourself headed in future?
AR: I see myself continuing to be a studio potter. I would love to keep traveling to sell while also sustaining myself with gallery sales and commissions. I think I’m settled in southwest Virginia for a while. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and I’ve found a great community here.
TP: What are you most looking forward to about the festival and what do you hope to take away from the experience?
AR: I look forward to the response to my work from the people who attend. From what I’ve gathered, it seems like a city where people are excited about art. I’m always interested in how pottery will fit into that. Any time my work is displayed, I hope to be able to learn from each person’s reaction how I can make it more accessible, more functional, easier to use, and get more ideas for what else to create.
Donald Golden
Bringing a photographers eye to forgotten buildings and spaces
The Pulse: Paint for me a portrait of yourself as an artist and how you got interested in your medium.
Donald Golden: I am an accountant by trade and found myself craving a way to express myself creatively. About five years ago, I downloaded the Instagram app on a whim. I was using it to edit and share photos taken with my iPhone and enjoyed the social interaction aspect of the app as well. One day, I stumbled across photos from inside an abandoned school in NYC and I was completely mesmerized. I couldn’t believe that something so beautiful was being completely neglected.
Around the same time, my wife and I began to seriously consider becoming foster parents in the State of Tennessee. The symbolism between providing foster care for children that had been neglected or abandoned and capturing the beauty of structures that were neglected and abandoned was eye opening! I knew from that moment I needed to explore similar locations and learn to photograph them.
TP: How do you bring the photographs to life?
DG: My goal was to capture the light, color and texture from abandoned buildings as I saw them with my eyes and I taught myself to do this with a basic DSLR camera. I make sure to stress that even though I shoot in a digital medium, I don’t rely on Photoshop or heavy editing techniques to produce my images. Also, I keep my signed, numbered editions of 11” x 14” and larger prints limited to only 25 to always encourage myself to keep exploring and find new locations.
TP: What is unique about your art? What will festivalgoers be drawn to?
DG: The subject matter alone is usually enough to spark exciting conversation. Late 19th and early 20th century architecture and craftsmanship are a stark contrast to the modular and mass production way things are built today. Art festival clientele always seem to appreciate the initial effort it took the creators and designers to build these structures and then lament the lack of care that has been given to them over the years. Also, I frame my prints in antique windows, cabinets and transoms. I enjoy the challenge and uniqueness non-traditional framing can present and feel customers appreciate the complimentary look and feel between frame and subject matter.
TP: How do you feel your art affects people?
DG: People will share stories where they can remember attending a school or church similar to one I’ve captured or visited a loved one in a mental health facility that is now forgotten and falling apart. The compliments I enjoy most are when people say they can’t believe something so simple or sad can be so hauntingly beautiful at the same time.
TP: Do you have any mentors you wish to thank?
DG: The first images I ever saw of abandonment were shot by Dennis Minner from St. Louis and formerly New York. I now call Dennis a friend and we routinely explore together. He has been an inspiration and mentor to me, instrumental in encouraging me to pursue the art festival aspect of fine art photography.
TP: Where does your art fit in the current cultural landscape and what direction do you see yourself headed in future?
DG: The biggest issue I face as an artist seems to be the race against time before abandonments are either demolished or irreparably vandalized. I prefer locations that are an accurate representation of their former purpose and I hate it when a building has been scavenged by thieves or defaced with non-artistic “tag” type graffiti. On the positive side, for the last five to ten years, there has been an ongoing trend with styles featuring restoration and re-use as evidenced by various reality television programs centered around architectural “picking” and remodeling which my medium fits into rather well.
TP: What are you most looking forward to about the festival and what do you hope to take away from the experience?
DG: This will be my first festival outside of the Memphis area so I look forward to meeting the people of Chattanooga and sharing my passion with them.
Mamie Biven
Turning inspiration from home videos into oil, canvas and wood
The Pulse: Paint for me a portrait of yourself as an artist and how you got interested in your medium.
Mamie Biven: I’ve loved painting and drawing since I was a kid. Actually, one of my first memories is of being in preschool and coloring with crayons. I made a series of parallel lines and realized that it looked like grass. I was so amazed that I could represent reality with simple marks on paper. It was like magic. I’ve worked in oil paint for several years now but recently I’ve been having a lot of fun experimenting with acrylic, gouache, and watercolors. They dry really quickly and you can’t move the paint around endlessly, so it challenges me to think of them more like drawings.
TP: How do you bring the paintings to life?
MB: I was inspired by my mom’s childhood family home videos—a lot of the newer paintings focus on capturing the mood and atmosphere in seemingly insignificant moments. Though most of them include the figure, my focus is not a tightly rendered portrait of a specific family member. The most recent ones on wood panels are small, intimate paintings of what I consider to be common moments. I like to use bold and unusual colors and I’m really interested in marks that show off the different qualities of paint.
I’m more interested in a two hour alla prima (wet paint on wet paint, no layers) painting than a smooth, photographic portrait. I think that there’s a language in how paint is applied, and I like my surfaces to reflect that. I often rely on chance and unpredictability in my process because creating situations in which I have to solve a problem usually makes the resulting painting more visually interesting and more fun to work on.
TP: How do you feel your art affects people?
MB: My work is very personal to me, but I like to think that I keep the pieces in a state of openness, where viewers can draw their own connections and conclusions. Ideally, I want others to be able to see my work and have a personal and emotional connection with it. Many of the paintings that I’ll be showing at 4 Bridges are small and intimate for that very reason.
TP: Where does your art fit in the current cultural landscape and what direction do you see yourself headed in future?
MB: The art world has become so diverse and painting is increasingly multidisciplinary. It’s sometimes referred to as the “expanded field”, taking from other disciplines and using them to push the boundaries of what is typically thought of as painting. It’s a really exciting time to be making work because it seems like there are infinite possibilities. That being said, I personally love the physical act of painting and I’ve always been drawn to the human figure so I think those will be an essential part of my work for a long time. I did recently acquire a vintage projector screen and I’ve been toying with the idea of integrating video into my painting practice in the future.
TP: What are you most looking forward to about the festival and what do you hope to take away from the experience?
MB: 4 Bridges is going to be the first time I’ve shown my work at a festival, so I’m excited to have the opportunity to show new work in this setting, which seems really direct. It’s easy to become really focused on working in the studio but it’s equally valuable to put work out there and get feedback, especially from people who don’t know me and my work already. I always get new insight into my own work from talking about it with others so I’m really excited about getting back to the studio after the festival and seeing where that momentum takes me.
To see their work, along with 155 other artists from across the country, come down to the 4 Bridges Arts Festival at the First Tennessee Pavilion (across from Finley Stadium) on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about the festival, visit 4bridgesartsfestival.org