The following interview was made on the occasion of Los Angeles Valley College’s faculty exhibition, MMXX, celebrating 70 years of Los Angeles Valley College Art Gallery exhibitions and programming. It took place months into the Covid-19 pandemic, an interruption to all things, this exhibition included.
An interview with Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum Of Art and Jamison Carter, Los Angeles Valley College art faculty.
For images of the exhibition please visit: https://lavcartgallery.com/section/496122-MMXX.html
An interview with Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum Of Art and Jamison Carter, Los Angeles Valley College art faculty.
For images of the exhibition please visit: https://lavcartgallery.com/section/496122-MMXX.html
Rita Gonzalez: It's September 9th, 2020. Let's get rid of this year. [laughs]
Jamison Carter: Exactly. Agreed. Hopefully it ends up well though.
Rita: Let's hope so. I was about to say it can't get any worse, but I think that's actually not a good thing to say. Never a good thing. I thought maybe if we could start out with this recent body of work, I know you just had to show at Klowden Mann, your gallery. I, unfortunately, did not get to see it in person, I'm seeing it from the images that are beautiful images of the work(1), but I wondered if you could start maybe in the present with these works because they seem to be- and they have been written about, at least in the press release, in response to this time period we're in, a fusing of your past work in terms of actually fusing the drawing and sculptural materials, literally fusing the drawing on to the sculpture. I don't know if you want to talk about that and rewind into past work, but it seemed like a good thing to do since it's a leap for you, it's a real shift for you.
Jamison: Sure. I can go all the way back to high school even, but just to say that I have primarily been a sculptor interested in material and working sculpturally even through undergrad. I kind of sketched for plans for making sculptures and things of that nature, but never really drawing for the sake of drawing or painting for the sake of painting. When I went into grad school, I went to Cranbrook and was under Heather McGill. She really wanted us to develop a 2D body of work, our way of talking about what we're after, through something a little bit more direct, I guess.
I actually tried to create paintings and sculpture that interacted together, it was way too didactic and over the top, but it was a good thing to investigate in grad school because you're in a microcosm. I developed a 2D body of work or a way of working in that way. Most of the shows that I've done since then have worked in tandem with 2 and 3D bodies of work. I've generally presented both modes at the same time....(click the box above for the full interview).
Jamison Carter: Exactly. Agreed. Hopefully it ends up well though.
Rita: Let's hope so. I was about to say it can't get any worse, but I think that's actually not a good thing to say. Never a good thing. I thought maybe if we could start out with this recent body of work, I know you just had to show at Klowden Mann, your gallery. I, unfortunately, did not get to see it in person, I'm seeing it from the images that are beautiful images of the work(1), but I wondered if you could start maybe in the present with these works because they seem to be- and they have been written about, at least in the press release, in response to this time period we're in, a fusing of your past work in terms of actually fusing the drawing and sculptural materials, literally fusing the drawing on to the sculpture. I don't know if you want to talk about that and rewind into past work, but it seemed like a good thing to do since it's a leap for you, it's a real shift for you.
Jamison: Sure. I can go all the way back to high school even, but just to say that I have primarily been a sculptor interested in material and working sculpturally even through undergrad. I kind of sketched for plans for making sculptures and things of that nature, but never really drawing for the sake of drawing or painting for the sake of painting. When I went into grad school, I went to Cranbrook and was under Heather McGill. She really wanted us to develop a 2D body of work, our way of talking about what we're after, through something a little bit more direct, I guess.
I actually tried to create paintings and sculpture that interacted together, it was way too didactic and over the top, but it was a good thing to investigate in grad school because you're in a microcosm. I developed a 2D body of work or a way of working in that way. Most of the shows that I've done since then have worked in tandem with 2 and 3D bodies of work. I've generally presented both modes at the same time....(click the box above for the full interview).
Review of "All Season Radials" at Klowden Mann by Yxta Maya Murray for ARTFORUM October/November issue 2020
https://www.artforum.com/print/https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202008/jamison-carter-84006/202008/jamison-carter-84006
In the months just prior to Covid-19 rearing its monstrous head in the United States, artist Jamison Carter lost both of his parents. Such a tragedy, combined with the horrors and isolation brought on by the pandemic, would crush even the most stalwart of souls. Yet Carter miraculously managed to find the wherewithal to produce “All Season Radials,” his majestic solo exhibition at Klowden Mann.
Carter’s new sculptures in this presentation—freestanding, wall-mounted, and floor-based—were rife with melancholy, mandalas, and cosmic mysteries. They were made primarily from dark urethane resin and featured meticulously rendered marker drawings transferred onto their surfaces. The artist’s references for these works are seemingly endless: from Coptic icons and tantra paintings to pictures of the Cat’s Eye Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the hallucinatory illustrations by Anglican mystic Robert Fludd. Portal (all works 2020), a wall piece, has a multihued and elaborately patterned radial at its center: A splash of flash-bang rays zip out from a foliate heart. This object—with its dazzling array of blues, pinks, greens, and golds—calls to mind the Tibetan Buddhist sipé khorlo (wheel of life) and the exquisite sand paintings of Losang Samten, a former monk who studied under the current Dalai Lama. Timesimilarly evokes the eternal turning of the universe with its golden-white eye, which looks something like a daisy girded by red, silver, and cobalt spokes. Time’s starflowers transform into trapezoids and rhombi that, to my mind, quote the geometric tessellations of sixteenth-century Islamic art and architecture, such as those found in the mihrab of the Jami Masjid mosque at Fatehpur Sikri in India, or in the shamsa paintings of imperial Mughal albums.
Carter’s encounters with death drew him to imagery that merges the symbols of world religions with scientific photographs of the universe. His work makes us wonder whether or not each of us is subject to a divine plan. His art underlines our mortality while offering up different ways to process it. Yet in this age of racial, religious, and ethnic trauma, it seems that he should dig deeper into his sources and offer insights—or at least more questions—about these cross-cultural resonances, so as to avoid the hazards of absorbing and nullifying nonwhite or non-Christian traditions into Western modes of thinking. A more visible sense of unease over this kind of sampling would trouble the work in more enriching ways.
Carter raises the ghosts of his parents with two sculptures that functioned as the show’s centerpieces. Father rest is a floor-based work of a dead body hidden by a shroud overlaid with a delicate constellation of celestial bodies. Disturbingly, the covering appears to shrink-wrap—or parasitically attach to?—the corpse. The work reminded me of Aleister Crowley’s belief that “every man and woman is a star.” Mother husk, however, is an erect and more imposing object rendered in black-and-gold resin, embedded with pink-glass spheres and embellished with drawn-on orbs and asteroids. It looks like a reptile, a charred Boschian beast, or an ancient deity. The figure stands awkwardly in the space while gazing upward. Her back is turned away from her companion—I hope not forever.
— Yxta Maya Murray
https://www.artforum.com/print/https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202008/jamison-carter-84006/202008/jamison-carter-84006
In the months just prior to Covid-19 rearing its monstrous head in the United States, artist Jamison Carter lost both of his parents. Such a tragedy, combined with the horrors and isolation brought on by the pandemic, would crush even the most stalwart of souls. Yet Carter miraculously managed to find the wherewithal to produce “All Season Radials,” his majestic solo exhibition at Klowden Mann.
Carter’s new sculptures in this presentation—freestanding, wall-mounted, and floor-based—were rife with melancholy, mandalas, and cosmic mysteries. They were made primarily from dark urethane resin and featured meticulously rendered marker drawings transferred onto their surfaces. The artist’s references for these works are seemingly endless: from Coptic icons and tantra paintings to pictures of the Cat’s Eye Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the hallucinatory illustrations by Anglican mystic Robert Fludd. Portal (all works 2020), a wall piece, has a multihued and elaborately patterned radial at its center: A splash of flash-bang rays zip out from a foliate heart. This object—with its dazzling array of blues, pinks, greens, and golds—calls to mind the Tibetan Buddhist sipé khorlo (wheel of life) and the exquisite sand paintings of Losang Samten, a former monk who studied under the current Dalai Lama. Timesimilarly evokes the eternal turning of the universe with its golden-white eye, which looks something like a daisy girded by red, silver, and cobalt spokes. Time’s starflowers transform into trapezoids and rhombi that, to my mind, quote the geometric tessellations of sixteenth-century Islamic art and architecture, such as those found in the mihrab of the Jami Masjid mosque at Fatehpur Sikri in India, or in the shamsa paintings of imperial Mughal albums.
Carter’s encounters with death drew him to imagery that merges the symbols of world religions with scientific photographs of the universe. His work makes us wonder whether or not each of us is subject to a divine plan. His art underlines our mortality while offering up different ways to process it. Yet in this age of racial, religious, and ethnic trauma, it seems that he should dig deeper into his sources and offer insights—or at least more questions—about these cross-cultural resonances, so as to avoid the hazards of absorbing and nullifying nonwhite or non-Christian traditions into Western modes of thinking. A more visible sense of unease over this kind of sampling would trouble the work in more enriching ways.
Carter raises the ghosts of his parents with two sculptures that functioned as the show’s centerpieces. Father rest is a floor-based work of a dead body hidden by a shroud overlaid with a delicate constellation of celestial bodies. Disturbingly, the covering appears to shrink-wrap—or parasitically attach to?—the corpse. The work reminded me of Aleister Crowley’s belief that “every man and woman is a star.” Mother husk, however, is an erect and more imposing object rendered in black-and-gold resin, embedded with pink-glass spheres and embellished with drawn-on orbs and asteroids. It looks like a reptile, a charred Boschian beast, or an ancient deity. The figure stands awkwardly in the space while gazing upward. Her back is turned away from her companion—I hope not forever.
— Yxta Maya Murray
Review of "All Season Radials" at Klowden Mann by Jody Zellen for ARTNOWLA.com
https://artnowla.com/2020/07/19/jamison-carter-all-season-radials/
In his exhibition, All Season Radials, Jamison Carter presents urethane resin works that fill the walls and floor of the gallery. These new pieces are made by combining poured urethane resin with drawing. Carter creatively experimented with these materials and ultimately devised a new technique whereby he draws with markers directly onto large sheets of plastic. He then pours black resin onto these sheets, molding the resin forms into irregular shapes. The finished works approximate flowery nebulas floating in black space. In previous series, Carter’s mixed-media sculptures were hard-edged and geometric, often containing bursts of wooden shards. He often presented his sculptures alongside abstract drawings that echoed the three-dimensional forms. In All Season Radials, the drawn and sculpted elements have merged.
The bright concentric stripes and rigid geometry that dominated previous works have been replaced by drawings containing celestial bodies, inspired by the night sky that simultaneously reference the shape of the COVID-19virus and formations within sand mandalas. The drawn elements within the works shimmer in contrast to the flat back plastic (some are even rendered with metallic tonalities) which reinforces their astrological nature. Works like Portal (2020) and Time (2020) are reminders of the thrill of looking through a telescope into the darkened sky and seeing a bright, colorful planet undulating through space. Because the works are drawn on plastic and transferred onto the resin, there is an imprecision and modulation to their form which Carter embraces. They resonate, but also feel fleeting. In works such as the diptych Carnation Nebula, (2020), portions of the painted starburst inhabit two separate pieces of the wall mounted black urethane resin as if an explosion broke them apart. A similar juncture occurs in Landslide as the painted fragments are split between two resin shapes.
While Carter’s resin wall pieces are thought provoking and compelling compositions that suggest portals into another world, his sculptural works are enigmatic creations with more earthly and human associations. That Carter’s parents passed while he was preparing for this exhibition influenced some of the pieces and can be seen as memorials to them. Mother husk, for example is a black resin totem decorated with golden lines that evokes the body as well as the spirit and stands 81-inches tall. Father rest extends horizontally across the floor— an amorphous body covered by a tarp. The shape of a figure is suggested by the folds of the black resin. Although Carter has mapped the planets in the night sky onto the tarp, this work is mired an aura of death.
Carter’s recent sculptures and drawn nebulas are imaginative, textured creations that extend to other realms while simultaneously being rooted in the realities of now. Though it is difficult not to view the exhibition within the context of the world-wide pandemic, Carter’s works continue to be personal explorations that touch on spiritual as well as universal themes.
https://artnowla.com/2020/07/19/jamison-carter-all-season-radials/
In his exhibition, All Season Radials, Jamison Carter presents urethane resin works that fill the walls and floor of the gallery. These new pieces are made by combining poured urethane resin with drawing. Carter creatively experimented with these materials and ultimately devised a new technique whereby he draws with markers directly onto large sheets of plastic. He then pours black resin onto these sheets, molding the resin forms into irregular shapes. The finished works approximate flowery nebulas floating in black space. In previous series, Carter’s mixed-media sculptures were hard-edged and geometric, often containing bursts of wooden shards. He often presented his sculptures alongside abstract drawings that echoed the three-dimensional forms. In All Season Radials, the drawn and sculpted elements have merged.
The bright concentric stripes and rigid geometry that dominated previous works have been replaced by drawings containing celestial bodies, inspired by the night sky that simultaneously reference the shape of the COVID-19virus and formations within sand mandalas. The drawn elements within the works shimmer in contrast to the flat back plastic (some are even rendered with metallic tonalities) which reinforces their astrological nature. Works like Portal (2020) and Time (2020) are reminders of the thrill of looking through a telescope into the darkened sky and seeing a bright, colorful planet undulating through space. Because the works are drawn on plastic and transferred onto the resin, there is an imprecision and modulation to their form which Carter embraces. They resonate, but also feel fleeting. In works such as the diptych Carnation Nebula, (2020), portions of the painted starburst inhabit two separate pieces of the wall mounted black urethane resin as if an explosion broke them apart. A similar juncture occurs in Landslide as the painted fragments are split between two resin shapes.
While Carter’s resin wall pieces are thought provoking and compelling compositions that suggest portals into another world, his sculptural works are enigmatic creations with more earthly and human associations. That Carter’s parents passed while he was preparing for this exhibition influenced some of the pieces and can be seen as memorials to them. Mother husk, for example is a black resin totem decorated with golden lines that evokes the body as well as the spirit and stands 81-inches tall. Father rest extends horizontally across the floor— an amorphous body covered by a tarp. The shape of a figure is suggested by the folds of the black resin. Although Carter has mapped the planets in the night sky onto the tarp, this work is mired an aura of death.
Carter’s recent sculptures and drawn nebulas are imaginative, textured creations that extend to other realms while simultaneously being rooted in the realities of now. Though it is difficult not to view the exhibition within the context of the world-wide pandemic, Carter’s works continue to be personal explorations that touch on spiritual as well as universal themes.