Naomi's blog

Last summer Naomi Yasui and I grabbed a coffee and went to Trinity-Bellwoods Park in Toronto's West Queen West neighbourhood for a chat about her early art. Naomi was one of six people that I interviewed for an article I wrote for the as of yet unpublished new magazine, The Stacks. Naomi, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed and dusting off your old portfolio to help facilitate our conversation.

Lee Sheppard: Describe an early piece of art that you made that you still like, but that is unique in your body of work. What do you like about this piece and how is it different from the other work you do?

Naomi Yasui: I had a hard time picking a piece, and I’m not sure if I even like it. This piece I did as a student—I think first year—at OCAD. It’s a site and intervention type piece. I grew up in Brantford, Ontario. It’s like this ruins of a town, or it used to be anyways. They’ve done a lot of rebuilding downtown so now it looks great. But, five years ago it was just abandoned. And they had these really neat, I guess boarded up buildings and someone had already painted these silhouettes and these scenes of imagined businesses or places that used to be there. I wrote out the lyrics to “Downtown” and I made it like this. I don’t know what you would call it.

Naomi shows me a photograph in an old portfolio. Word bubbles containing lyrics from the Petula Clark song turn the tableaux into a comic book musical.

NY: Anyways, it’s different than the work I do now because it was totally site—like time and place—specific. It immediately effected everyone who sort of like was dwelling in that area. Which wasn’t many people, but there were a few people living in these apartments.

Naomi points to different windows above the boarded-up storefronts.

NY: It’s a little bit more interactive or interactive in a different way than the work I do now. It’s kinda cheesy and it’s kinda funny which also doesn’t really exist in my work anymore. I really liked coming up with ideas and finding a way to express it or to create conversation. Now I’ve just chosen one material and I’m just investigating that.

L: Why do you think you made the shift?

NY: I’ve always been really bookish. A lot of what I’m interested in is the history of cultures and places. I think this started with the history of this particular city and how it came to be like just nothing—a slum basically—from what was one of the most economically successful and industrial towns in Canada. So I started researching the city. I guess just because in school I started taking different courses and I eventually came across material art and design. I always really liked building and fabricating and figuring out how things are made. But I think I felt like because I was in art school I had to have some sort of concept or social commentary or say something with what I was making. So I would just use a bunch of different materials, but then I found ceramics to be most challenging, so I started to focus there. Then I made a tie between . . . there was a Brantford Pottery. I did . . . there’s a piece in here somewhere . . . maybe not . . . oh, here it is. It is a really bad sculpture of Wayne Gretzky who’s from Brantford. But this was their logo.

She points to two images, each one of two blue-coloured birds sitting above the town’s and the province’s name.

NY: I dug this clay up from a farm close to where my parents live. It’s the same colour clay as was used by Brantford Pottery. And I started researching the history of this specific ceramics factory. And then I eventually got interested in the history of objects and their relationship to people and how it can create culture or how it identifies.

L: Describe an early piece of art that you made that you are embarrassed by or that is no longer consistent with your work, but that anticipates a major work or series of pieces that you have completed or are currently working on. In other words, is there work that you don’t show people? Does this work relate to what you currently do, even though it doesn’t quite fit?

NY: This is a funny one. Rat Fink. I think this is from one of my first ceramic classes. I think it was sort of a rebellion or something countering traditional ceramics practices. I was like, “I don’t wanna be a potter and I’m not interested in making functional cups and bowls and using glaze recipes that all the faculty are teaching us” and things like that, but I . . . it’s totally different conceptually, but still at the same time it’s not. It’s really embarrassing because it’s Rat Fink and it’s something that I’m totally not into anymore at all. But I feel like most artists go through that phase of being really interested in the low-brow outsider art type movements. I still really appreciate and really love folk art and outsider art ‘cause I feel like it’s got something a little bit more real to it or I guess grass roots. It comes from somewhere which really explains someone’s life or their experiences or their surroundings. So I was really interested in Hot Rodding and the ‘fifties and Ed Roth specifically, I guess, because his art form was applied to something which is so everyday and effected everybody in the community.

Ed Roth was a custom car maker and T-shirt artist.

NY: I guess I just wanted the most drastic contrast possible, so I made a porcelain Rat Fink—I made 8 of them, actually. It affects my work now, because it was kind of a challenging sculpt to do at the time and I made a mould off of it so I cast, yeah, like a series of 8. Mould making and sculpting is still an integral and like a really important part of my process now. So I think this is where it started. Like making the decision to not use the wheel and make moulds and sculpt and make things that weren’t necessarily functional but more related to . . . I guess in a more art context where it’s an icon that’s familiar to everyone, sort of: a wider viewership. I guess more accessible. But now I feel like my work is really sort of obscure and not as, ‘hey check out this crazy icon that I made out of a totally wacky material.’ I mean . . .

She refers to the Rat Fink piece.

NY: . . . you can tell that it’s obviously done by someone in art school. Or just out of high school or maybe, even, a thirteen year-old boy. It’s really funny. I’m really embarrassed by it, but I still am like, oh that was a really good time.

L: Is there a method or approach to art making that has become obsolete in your practice?

NY: Yes. I guess most recognizably is the material change. I feel like I started as a conceptual artist who just wanted to use any material in order to get to where I wanted to go. Now I’ve sort of just focused on porcelain and ceramics because I feel like there’s so much challenge in the material: figuring out how to make it work for me and work with it. Also the historical background and people’s relationships to the domestic, which is what ceramics is most usually associated with. But I feel like also what’s become obsolete is trying too hard to communicate with the viewership about what I wanna say. It’s now just focused mostly on my research and what I’m interested in and not trying to use iconography. I did a series of plates where I did a lot of painting on them because at the time I thought that maybe people understand two-D type mediums like painting and drawing as an art form rather than something like ceramics, a domestic material that’s used in their house everyday. But I’ve let go of that and I don’t really care anymore. I’m like, ‘whatever.’ I’ve learned that I can tell narrative through objects. Whether or not people quite understand it, I think it’s more interesting. For me anyways. I’m no longer trying to fit in with you know, people like Andrew or Nick D., a lot of my other peers who work two-D and work in traditional artistic paintings on walls type thing.

L: Why the shift then? Where did the confidence to do your own thing come from?

NY: I did a collaboration with Stephen Appleby-Barr. He’s an oil painter who’s one of the team members of Macho. Team Macho. I made a series of decorative plates where I sandblasted pattern into the border of the plates and then I made these medallions that are sculpted and hung on a ribbon sort of like regalia. We put his paintings on them. Then in that same series I started the alchemical vases. A lot of his work has to do with secret societies and alchemical practice in like the sixteen seventeen hundreds. I just sort of threw them because I hadn’t worked on the wheel and I just had a lot of fun with it. And I’m like, ‘well, I’m just gonna make these, these crazy vessels that you put different kinds of alchemical compounds in.’ That series was totally my own and it was actually a lot more successful. Like a lot of people really responded to it and a lot of people didn’t really respond to Stephen’s paintings on my work. The collaboration just wasn’t that successful. I think mainly because it wasn’t painted directly on the work. It gave me confidence. Like a lot of people were like, ‘you should just go with this series. In that direction.’ It was interesting to see how people could respond to just objects like that. Find them interesting on their own.

I’m continuing that series. There’s sixty different alchemical compounds from the original, I guess, periodic table. Chemical table? I think I’ve done thirty, so I’m half way there. But I’m participating in a magic themed show at Narwhal in December, so I’m continuing with the idea of early scientific practice and the whole magic of alchemy and it’s relationship to clay. Porcelain was invented by an alchemist in, like, the seventeen hundreds in Germany, so I guess in Europe, was when porcelain was born.

Johann Friedrich Bottger is considered by many to be the first European to make porcelain, though the Chinese had been making porcelain for centuries.

NY: So, I kind of like reading about the development of a material and I guess its mystery or whatever. But also that fact that you put clay that you dig up out of the earth into a kiln that goes to extremely hot temperature and it can turn into something is kinda crazy. I’m working on apothecary jars, I think they’re gonna be about this big.

She holds her arms out.

L: Like about two feet? One and a half feet?

NY: They’re gonna have spigots to hold liquid. And they seem sort of like historical forms, but not accurate or right at all. And that series is going to be different kinds of herbal medicinal type plants so like poison hemlock and deadly nightshade and things like that.

L: So the shapes you’re using for these vessels are actually based on . . .

NY: They’re roughly based on historical forms that I’ve researched. Like I see different objects and I’m not skilled enough in my craft yet to totally replicate those forms but I don’t know that I would want to anyways. But also the challenge in trying to make, you know, the circumference larger to smaller and just the difficulty in how you make certain forms is what I’m interested in also. So a lot of the historical forms are really complicated and ornate and kind of ridiculous—like over the top just to prove craftsmanship and ability—which I’m interested in. Concept aside, it’s mostly how things are made and being really good at making what I do. It’s more fabrication than it is conceptual, I guess.

L: The apothecary vessels and the alchemical vessels, those are all unique, are they?

NY: They’re unique, yeah. These ones are thrown. When I moved into a studio from school . . . like at school I had all of these resources to make moulds and the space and the machinery and whatever. And then when I moved into my studio I only had a wheel. So it’ll take a little bit of time to build up the infrastructure to be able make moulds again. But I kind of like trying to conquer this particular part of the craft because it’s so difficult and frustrating. I like how, it’s sort of a life long journey. It’s a project that I’ll never be good at. Like I’ll never really be good at ceramics. I like that. It keeps me interested knowing that it’s something that I’m gonna have to work at for the next thirty, forty, fifty years. I like pretending like one of those apprentices to masters in medieval times. I actually have a piece that’s designed. It’s like one of those masterpieces that apprentices would have to complete before being accepted into the guild system in medieval times. So it’s got a number of different kinds of handles and it just shows every aspect of the skills you’ve learned over the years.

L: You have one?

NY: I’ve planned one. And I’ve started sculpting some pieces for it. But I think it’s gonna be one of those projects that happens over time and it’s just gonna be a mishmash of everything that I’ve learned to do in one piece.

L: Why do you think you have this fascination with late medieval into Renaissance European culture?

NY: I would call it a romance, I guess. I’m pretty romantic about. I guess, the amount of prestige put onto artisans at the time. I mean they were only as good as they were because if they weren’t they’d be beheaded. So, like, they were basically trying to make the most beautiful shit possible or else they’d die. But, I don’t know why I am. I guess. I don’t know. I mean I always grew up with really sort of ostentatious porcelain collections, like my mother’s and my grandmother’s. And they’re really super romantic about the past and I think it’s just ‘cause craft like that doesn’t exist anymore. And it’s also so like crazy to see something made in such archaic and like, low, technological times where I’m like, ‘whoa. How did they do that? I wanna do that.’ And we have all this technology and it’s still never gonna be the same.

L: It sort of describes my response to going into cathedrals. It’s remarkable what people accomplished.

NY: The fact that things come from human hands and minds.

L: It almost seems like a . . . It undermines technology in a way that I like. It suggests that the potential for innovation doesn’t lie with technology, it actually lies with people.

NY: Peoples’ understanding of materials and resources and what they can do with them. Yeah. But my interest in it might be totally irrelevant to contemporary times. But I think it’s still important for others to at least think about how things are made and if mine are a little bit more crude and shown next to paintings and other artists.

L: It brings up the question then: what is art’s relevance?

NY: I struggle with it because I kind of hate art a lot of the time and I kind of don’t really understand its relevance in contemporary times. So I think that’s why I moved to more object based work. So I sort of, even with my own work, I’m like, ‘is this really important?’ It’s hard to find purpose in what I do a lot of the time. And then I just have to remind myself that I just really enjoy researching and making and hopefully other people learn from it. It’s so selfish to me to want to live a career as an artist. Or, you know, it makes me kind of question why I didn’t go into industrial design and make objects that will be used or systems implemented that directly affect everyday life.

L: Kareem Rashid’s garbage can? I don’t know if that makes people’s life better.

NY: No. That’s true. People don’t really need more junk. Which is also one of my things that I question. How can I be making these things? Nobody needs this.

L: This is what the interest in alchemy and these outdated notions of the world suggest to me: that people need just an object of meditation. Like an object to contemplate maybe has more value than a fluorescent garbage can. You’re challenging people’s values around objects.

NY: Who knows, maybe I could make a series of pieces where I don’t fire them I just make them and then when the exhibition’s over I just reuse the clay.

L: I have permanence issues with art, so that would really upset me.

Nik's website

Nik's blog

This summer I had the pleasure of interviewing artist Nik Dudukovic about the art he created right around the time he started to take his work seriously—when he was on the cusp of calling himself an artist. Nik was one of six people that I interviewed for an article I wrote for the as of yet unpublished new magazine, The Stacks. Nik, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed and so freely talking about and sharing a drawing that you do not show frequently. Note: the images above are samples of Dudukovic's recent work.

Lee Sheppard: Describe an early piece of art that you made that you still like, but that is unique in your body of work. What do you like about this piece and how is it different from the other work you do?

Nik Dudukovic: It wasn’t different it was just sort of the start. Now it’s different. It was a drawing of an eagle with a snake’s body throwing something up onto the guy that it was growing out of. See it sounds like such stoner stuff when I actually describe it. But um, it was when I realized that if I spent more than half an hour on something it would look like I spent more than half an hour on it. It doesn’t look like the stuff I do now, but I still like it ’cause of that realization.

L: How does it look different?

ND: Well, different in the same way that the black and white stuff that I’m doing now looked two years ago, where right now if I did that drawing it wouldn’t make the grade you know?

L: Just ‘cause of the rendering quality?

ND: Yeah, but also the way you learn to invest time in it and the way you look at your own work. Or again, it wouldn’t pass the grade. It wouldn’t fit into any sort of theme at this point. It was just sort of I wanna draw this. Kinda like in Billy Madison when he’s like, “I drew a blue duck ’cause I’ve never seen a blue duck” and blah blah blah, that kinda thing.

L: You’d never seen a flying snake barfing —?

ND: A flying snake eagle—

L: Barfing on the body it was growing out of?

ND: Not often. I saw one in the pond when I was smoking {behind the house where we spoke}.

L: There’s one that frequents this neighbourhood.

ND: There are posters around the neighbourhood.

L: “Have you seen my pet? Runaway flying snake thing. Will puke.”*

ND: That’s good.

L: How does it look different than your current work?

ND: Physically it’s the line work. Right now if I drew a leaf, even if it was like an inch by an inch, it could take an hour to draw. Whereas these leaves were sort of what led to the way I draw now. Or scales in this case, ’cause it was a snake.

L: The textures were . . .

ND: They were just more loose. Not to sound like one of those people that’s like, “if you follow my work . . .”

L: But . . .

ND: But if you do, you know it started off as nothing ’cause I just did, like, homework art. I did art when I was asked to by school. Then eventually it started getting messy and drippy. Then I added colour to that and I realized colour didn’t work. But I also realized that you can only go so far with messy or drippy, where you’re just like relying on a technique as opposed to like the substance or why you’re using that technique. Then, that’s where the style began to evolve. That drawing {the vomiting serpent-raptor-man egg} was done sort of in between super messy and super tight. So it was kind of like half way in between. It was a bit of both.

L: Describe an early piece of art that you made that you are embarrassed by or that is no longer consistent with your work, but that anticipates a major work or series of pieces that you have completed or are currently working on. In other words, is there work that you don’t show people? Does this work relate to what you currently do, even though it doesn’t quite fit?

ND: Like I said before we started the interview my Mom decided to frame everything single thing from high school and put it up around the house. I don’t usually cringe when I look at the past, but I’m constantly reminded that I should cringe every day when I walk by them. But at the same time I think I approached those the same way I do now, but I just feel now this is kinda what I do so I know why I do it and why I approach it a certain way. As opposed to back then where I was like, “Wow, I spent three hours on this painting” and I’d do two paintings a year type thing. It was a different approach.

L: Like the way you approach making as opposed to the way you approach subject matter?

ND: But I think it hasn’t changed a lot, sort of why you like the idea of something before you do it and why you follow through with it.

L: Are you saying the content of those images is similar?

ND: Like in the first answer how I said there’s an evolution of style, there’s also an evolution of content. But, I mean, in five years I might look back on what I’m doing now and think the content isn’t as good as it is in 2014.

L: In a way you probably hope that’s true.

ND: You hope that you don’t look back and think that, “shit 2009 was the best, it’s all behind me.”

L: What one of the pieces your mom put up is the most difficult for you to look at?

ND: There’s one in my mom’s living room. I was at the ROM with a friend and we decided . . . there was a tour going around that we didn’t pay for, but we just kinda latched on and the guy led us around. We sorta just tried to make ourselves scarce, but we were trying to listen to what he was saying. And we went to the knights in armour pavilion or whatever and there was one . . . the way one of the window displays was set up it was just like one knight raining blows down upon another from above. It’s one of those things when you just see something for some reason it’s burned in your memory or just clicks. You know, you kind of take it and twist it your own way and make it a painting. In grade 12 you realize you can’t paint it this way so you’re gonna paint it this way and then justify why you painted it that way. It’s probably one of the first times that I realized what it takes to make something worth looking at and relatable as opposed to just taking a photo of something and just saying, “oh, this is a photo of a chair that my girlfriend called me on for the first time.” And it’s a bad photo and nobody cares. It takes a lot more than having it personal to you and expecting everybody else to relate to it the same way.

L: So what’s the image actually look like?

ND: It’s so stupid. Oh my God. It’s just brutal. It’s just this thing laying on the ground. It’s aweful.

L: Like a knight in armour?

ND: Kinda just a thing made of bone on it’s back and this other thing floating above it, not in an action pose, but maybe pre action pose. Something’s about to happen, like you caught the snapshot before something happened or maybe after something happened. It’s just black and red and green and everything’s straight out of the tube. Just really shitty. And I got into OCAD with that painting.

L: Is the thing above it bone too?

ND: No. It’s like misty and like foggy and smoky.

L: But it’s like a form?

ND: Yeah. The same way a genie coming out of a lamp is a form. It’s kinda like a half a form. 

L: Is it acrylic paint?

ND: It’s acrylic, but I didn’t even have enough acrylic so—when acrylic starts drying, which is really quickly, and you keep trying to smear it, it looks like it’s been like burnt and just burnished. So there’s a lot of hot spots and really thick areas of paint and then like, super thin—just like trying to stretch it out. 

L: Where you can really see the canvas underneath?

ND: Yep. Sounds awesome, I’m sure.

L: And it was part of your portfolio to get into OCAD?

ND: Yep. And it also taught me that if you just say something with enough conviction to somebody that’s in a position of power over you, they’ll believe you.

If your work’s amazing and somebody says, “Oh I like your stuff. What’d you think of it? Why’d you do it?” And you say, “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t think much. I just do it.” They’re gonna think, “Oh, this guy’s kinda dumb and his work is dumb” all of a sudden. If you just blather on and on and just quote stuff eventually—this just circular, like, Marshall McLuhan logic—and just quote enough stuff that has nothing to do with what you’re actually talking about, but in the end, just one word ties it all together, doesn’t actually, but it sounds like it does, then it’s as good as sold.

L: Is there a method or approach to art making that has become obsolete in your practice?

ND: I think the messy stuff, which I really like doing. I did a whole series, that one that was in the second Pilot book—like that was little on the pages, the messy people—you know, I did like a hundred of them in less than an hour and it was just sitting staring out the window and watching people walk by and just capturing a three second pose in really messy ink. Now that it’s evolved to so much detail and just like—at this point if I accidentally smudge a line that could undo three hours of work—that the messy stuff? I can’t bring myself to fill an eyedropper with ink and just spray it around once everything’s been done. I still like how it looks and I still like to do it. But the reason it’s obsolete is that it could just cancel out all the other work that’s been done. It’s just too nerve wracking to actually do it. To start with it? Then you rush everything else.

L: Do you feel like you’ve lost anything by getting away from that process?

ND: I didn’t, but one of my thesis professors seemed really disappointed. He said he saw it going somewhere and there was so much life in them. It’s sort of like when somebody tells you in past tense what your work looked like and it’s all really positive, it’s like an underhanded way of saying this is what I think of it now. Like, “You used to be so much fun, you used to be awesome.” But it’s one of those things where, if you’re happy with it now, then there’s no regret.

L: Do you think the current work has the same vitality as those?

ND: I think so, because the old work was, it’s kind of easy to win people over with a ton of dots and spray and just like mess, but like controlled chaos type thing. But it’s the kind of work you look at and say, “Oh, that shit is cool.” But nobody really likes it enough to want to buy it and look at it for any longer than the ten minutes of looking at it and the twenty minutes that it took to draw it. I think now it’s more about somebody seeing a piece from ten feet away and liking its shape and then seeing it from ten inches away, liking all the detail and throughout the night they just keep coming back to it. And it’s sort of like that long vitality where they’ll always find something new they wanna look at every other day or every week or every time they look at it. It’s reflective of the way I work. The same way you look at messy stuff is the same way that it was drawn and the same way you look at detailed stuff is the same way that it’s created. Just listening to an audio book of somebody talking and all you’re doing is sitting there in silence listening to somebody talk and drawing dots as opposed to listening to Metallica and spraying stuff around. Nothing wrong with Metallica, but I’m just saying it’s two sides of the coin type thing.

I like where my work is going and I still keep discovering new stuff, but the discoveries don’t jump out at you as much. It’s just little things that sort of help the process along or make the final product look a little bit better. Whereas when I was doing the messy stuff I bought a really big eyedropper to spray big crap with and now it’s like I do detailed stuff and I bought this spray and once I spray the drawing it changes the opacity by five percent and only I notice it, but it’s like the little things now. I’m not that much of a creature of that kind of habit. So I’m not really that attached to the style. I can see it changing a bunch and why not? I don’t wanna draw the same way for sixty more years.