Featured Artist: Gelah Penn

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A brief intro

I 'm Gelah Penn. I was born in a small town in western Pennsylvania. After receiving a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, I moved to New York City, where I have lived for many years. I have a part-time day job in the communications department of a child welfare agency.



Portrait of Gelah Penn at the age of eight.



My work in general

My work explores mark-making in sculptural space. In largely temporal, site-specific installations, I expand on the vocabulary of gestural abstraction by deploying linear, synthetic materials to construct a kind of meaty ephemerality—an accretion of marks and their shadows generating visual noise.



Gelah Penn, The Naked Kiss, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums*, 2009.
At McKenzie Fine Art, NYC. Photo: Ken Ferdman

Gelah Penn, (Detail) The Naked Kiss, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums*, 2009.
At McKenzie Fine Art, NYC. Photo: Ken Ferdman

Gelah Penn, (Detail) The Naked Kiss, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums*, 2009.
At McKenzie Fine Art, NYC. Photo: Ken Ferdman

* NOTE: Mixed mediums may include: monofilament, mosquito netting, plastic and copper mesh, rubber and vinyl tubing, vinyl lanyard, Dacron line, plastic, felt dots, upholstery needles, rubber ball, ear plugs, and t-pins.

My development trajectory has been a long and winding road, closely tied to my use of materials. It has gone something like this:

1. Made abstract paintings;
2. stuck things (mostly hair—real and synthetic) on the paintings;
3. painted and stuck things on old wooden hat blocks, which I then configured in wall installations;
4. built wooden forms as armatures for monofilament (fishing line) sculptures;
5. realized I hated building things;
6. used found objects as armatures;
7. eliminated underlying structures completely and began to use only the wall as my armature.

I have worked in installation since the late 1990s.



Gelah Penn, Shadow of a Doubt, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist and Carl Berg Projects.


Ambivalence is a major character trait of mine, so I’m quite comfortable in the spaces between drawing, painting and sculpture. I moved away from painting because I needed to give gesture physicality. My intention is to dematerialize sculptural form and give substance to two-dimensional line. I think I was drawn to installation because I have a strong sense of territory, and making these works allows me to interpret and define a given space. There is something quasi-cinematic and literary about the form, and that speaks to my great interest in film and fiction. There is no conventional narrative in the work, but there is a sense of tension, chaos, anxiety and naughty bits.



Gelah Penn, (Detail) Shadow of a Doubt, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist and Carl Berg Projects.


I’m drawn to all manner of detritus; the kinds of things that get caught and swept along, e.g., dust in corners; flotsam in tornadoes; motes in the air, in the brain, in flux. I’m interested in the complexities of visual commotion and welcome the viewer going in and out of focus looking at my work. The profusion of gestures may sometimes be disconcerting, but I hope also engaging.




Gelah Penn, (Detail) Shadow of a Doubt, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist and Carl Berg Projects.


My attraction to monofilament as a primary material is due to the way it reflects and absorbs light and because I can essentially draw with it. I’ve gotten to know how to work with its natural inclinations and that has become almost a collaborative process. To some extent, it dictates what the piece will be.




Gelah Penn, (Detail) Shadow of a Doubt, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Carl Berg Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Photo courtesy of the artist and Carl Berg Projects.



My process

A new piece begins with a site visit. I take photographs and then embark on casual, ruminative sketches in which ideas begin to percolate. At that point, I work up passages in my studio with a stash of materials that I keep in giant ziplock bags, as well as some components that I’ve pre-fabricated (I do a lot of knotting in the evening while scanning old movies). This rough draft (since the way I work is somewhat performative, it could also be called a “rehearsal”) is taken down and some segments are rolled up in large plastic tarps. I then box up a ton of materials that I might need—I always take far more than I ever actually use.




Gelah's studio. Photo: Gelah Penn

In Gelah's studio - materials collected for installation. Photo: Gelah Penn



The real work begins on site—an intense, risky and anxiety-ridden process that involves much improvisation. It’s a bit like working without a net. I don’t have assistants—there are too many decisions that need to be made while installing, and I haven’t figured out a way to use help without it becoming a distraction. Installation time varies, depending on the architectural parameters of the space and complexity of the piece.

Gelah Penn, Suddenly, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Allegra LaViola Gallery, NYC. Photo: Jason Mandella

Gelah Penn, (Detail) Suddenly, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2010.
At Allegra LaViola Gallery, NYC. Photo: Jason Mandella

When installing, I am not on auto-pilot. Ideas and decisions are generated in the making of the work. Each installation provokes a question or problem that I respond to and work through in succeeding installations.



Gelah Penn, (Detail) Clash by Night, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2009.
At Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. Photo: John Groo

Gelah Penn, (Detail) Clash by Night, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2009.
At Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. Photo: John Groo


I like working with oppositions: transparent/opaque, calm/chaotic, fluid/choppy, lyrical/nasty. Stretched and taut lines suggest spatial planes. Shadows are all important in inducing a feeling of perceptual dislocation.

Gelah Penn, Clash by Night, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2009.
At Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. Photo: John Groo

Gelah Penn, (Detail) Clash by Night, dimensions variable, Mixed mediums, 2009.
At Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT. Photo: John Groo

In addition to installation, I also work copiously on paper. In a recent series of monofilament relief works, “Blackfil,” I limit my materials to gray or clear monofilament and black acrylic paint. This enables me to focus more keenly on the gestures themselves and build layers of real and faux shadows. With Yupo (a synthetic paper) as my armature, I thread monofilament in gnarled configurations across the paper’s surface to create expanses of peripatetic mark-making: psychic sutures. As with the installations, I encourage the viewer to read these pieces beginning anywhere they wish, and to engage with the work’s visual cacophony.

Gelah Penn, Blackfil #10, dimensions variable, Monofilament
and acrylic on Yupo, 2008. Photo: John Berens

Gelah Penn, (Detail) Blackfil #10, dimensions variable, Monofilament
and acrylic on Yupo, 2008. Photo: John Berens

Gelah Penn, Blackfil #8, dimensions variable, Monofilament
and acrylic on Yupo, 2008. Photo: John Berens

Gelah Penn, (Detail) Blackfil #8, dimensions variable, Monofilament
and acrylic on Yupo, 2008. Photo: John Berens

My influences are many: Goya, Turner, Giacometti, Henri Michaux, Cy Twombly, Lynda Benglis, Alan Saret, Judy Pfaff, Sarah Sze, and films, especially film-noir and 1950s melodramas. The titles of the installations are taken from film noir, underscoring the psychological undertow of the work.



Happenings

Gelah Penn: Surface Tensions, Sculpture Magazine, November 2010. 11/2/2010.
Feature by Patricia Rosoff.

Recent exhibitions include Carl Berg Projects in Los Angeles and Allegra LaViola Gallery in New York City. A feature on my work is in the November issue of Sculpture Magazine and I am currently a recipient of a Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation/The Space Program award for 2010/2011.



Contact



Gelah Penn, Solo, 43" x 28" x 13", Armature wire, monofilament, Dacron line, acrylic, 2001. Photo: Gelah Penn


Your readers may contact me at gelah@earthlink.net. My website is located at www.gelahpenn.com. I do not currently have gallery representation. Commissions are welcome.

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Featured Artist: Sarah Bliss

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Would you please introduce yourself to our readers that might not be familiar with you and your work?

Featured artist Sarah Bliss. Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

I’m Sarah Bliss. I’m a New Englander through and through, living in Western Massachusetts. I have a BA in Political Science from Oberlin College, and a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Along the way, I’ve made a lot of art.


When and how did you get interested in art making? Currently, what type of job(s) do you do besides making art? Do you teach, write and/or curate art exhibits?

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Return to Grace. Archival pigment print. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

I’ve always made things. I need to have my hands sunk into matter, and my body exploring and moving. It’s how I come to know myself, keep balance, and make sense of the world. Prior to focusing full-time on my art about five years ago, I worked in many professional capacities: I’ve taught art, ecopsychology, and writing at the college level; taught art and environmental studies to schoolchildren; managed social justice non-profits; and run my own housepainting business. I am most alive when engaged in creating, facilitating and witnessing deep personal transformation. Ritual feeds me.



Please tell us a bit about your work in general. What media do you work in? What are the inspirations behind the creation and what is the specific message you strive to convey to your viewers?


I seek to understand that which cannot be seen or known by mind or eye: the passage of time, presence, the energetic qualities of spaces and places. I use my work to both research and document my own process of coming-to-know, and then to extend the understandings gained to others. I work across many disciplines: performance, sound, movement, video, photography, installation, and sculpture. Increasingly, I bring to my artmaking the ritual and transformative actions through which I make sense of the world and find my place in it.

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

My current work focuses on an investigation of spaces/places and the experience of the body in them. I am interested in the ability of spaces to record and hold, and then either deflect or amplify, the energetic and material history of actions and emotions. I seek out traces, both visible and invisible, of actions and energy lodged in particular places. I’m interested in the way a particular space affects our moods and perceptions. I use my work to create conditions and situations that reveal this dynamic interplay between place, history, body, psyche and spirit. I offer to the viewer/participant an opportunity to touch into this knowing kinaesthetically and emotionally.



Could you discuss a bit your creative process? How does it all start, what techniques and materials do you use? From where do you find your material?


One of the spaces I’m spending a lot of time in these days is the ruins of an abandoned brick beehive charcoal kiln (known locally as a “coke kiln”.) The kiln was built in 1931 and last used in the early ‘80s. Thirty feet in diameter, and 35’ to the apex of its dome, it turned a packed load of 90 cords of wood into 20 tons of charcoal over a several-weeks-long burning process where temperatures reached 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. The embedded energy of years of such intense alchemical transformation is physically palpable still – it almost knocked me over when I first entered the space.

Sarah Bliss. Coke Kiln: Interior. Archival pigment print. 2008.

My working process with the kiln includes historical research, but my focus is on spending a lot of time there, letting information come to me through my kinaesthetic experience of the place. Stillness is important. Listening is important. Watching and witnessing the passage of time is fundamental. Paying attention; cultivating deeper and deeper awareness.

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Mapping the Kiln. Archival pigment print. 2010.

This deep listening and taking-in leads to a channeling of the found bodily experience into movement and vocalization, which become both a record of discovered knowledge, and ground for further investigations.

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Return to Grace. Archival pigment print. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss.

My working process includes movement, photography, sound, video, writing, drawing, witnessing, listening, being with. Out of this will come a large body of work in a variety of media. The ultimate shape of presentation can then be tailored for a variety of situations and venues. This particular project has already resulted in a series of photographs, and another form it will almost certainly take is as a multi-media installation. It might also result in a video sculpture, a series of performances, or a sound piece.

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Return to Grace. Archival pigment print. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Return to Grace. Archival pigment print. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. From the series: Return to Grace. Archival pigment print. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Another project I’m working on utilizes an extremely stripped-down action to explore the passage of time, permanence, presence, and the meaning of a life’s work. Initiated while on residency at the Vermont Studio Center a year ago, the project entails walking back and forth between two walls and making a mark on each wall each time the walker arrives at it. It’s called the Walking-Marking Project.

Sarah Bliss. Performance still from Walking-Marking 1.
October 12, 2009. 10:24 a.m., Johnson, VT.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss.

Through this simple repetitive action, enacted with attention and intention, the walker becomes highly aware of their bodily experience in relation to space and time, including light, breath, other bodies, and most interestingly, the accumulated and accumulating energetic history. The marks made, both with graphite on the wall or paper scrolls, and through continual footsteps on the floor or ground, emerge over time as a perceptible record of the physical action and energetic history stored and held in the place. I’m particularly interested in the experience of attuning to these energetic resonances and physical traces. The project is a means of literally stepping into that stream of time.

Sarah Bliss. Walking Marking 1. Detail of wall drawing. 2009.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss.

The Walking-Marking Project has developed in a variety of ways from its start as a solo durational performance and installation in Vermont. There, over the course of 24 days, I made 9441 marks on each of two walls, and a beautifully rich floor drawing emerged from the continual burnishings of my footsteps. Video of this performance was later projected onto the 30’ steel I-beam of a bridge under construction outside my studio window, enacting a performative drawing onto the bridge that spoke of the incessant journeys and crossings made over decades across the spanned river.

Sarah Bliss. Video projection of Walking-Marking 1 performance onto Pearl St bridge
during its construction over the Gihon River, Johnson, VT, 5:24 a.m., October 22, 2009.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

This past summer, the Walking-Marking project was performed again, this time as a collaborative project involving 25 participants at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, Massachusetts.. Over the course of a 5-week show, walker-markers took turns activating the gallery’s 20-foot proscenium running the length of a glass wall bordering the street.

Sarah Bliss. Walking-Marking 2 performance still.
A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA. August 6, 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

This iteration of the project focused particularly on the dynamics of multiple energies making and sharing the space, especially vis-a-vis collaboration/exchange with pedestrian passersby on the sidewalk abreast of the performance space. The dynamic convergences and dissonances between the performers’ highly intentional and attentive actions and that of sidewalk pedestrians’ often-distracted multitasking ambulation just inches away on the other side of the glass was fascinating, and made for a richly layered performative space.

Sarah Bliss. Walking-Marking 2 performance still.
A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA. August 6, 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Walking-Marking 2 performance still.
A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA. August 1, 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Walking-Marking 2 performance still.
(Pedestrians get in on the act.) A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA.
August 6, 2010. Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

For me, the project was exciting in another way: it was the first time my work has provided a participatory way for others to engage with the kinaesthetic, spiritual and intellectual discoveries I am making. I was deeply moved by the experiences of many of the walker-markers, which were both recorded in a written log, and shared together after the show in a focus group. The shifts in awareness of self-in-space-and-time and vis-à-vis other bodies and community that performers (and audience members) reported greatly excite me. I look forward to developing more work along these lines.

Sarah Bliss. Walking-Marking 2 performance stills.
A.P.E. Gallery, Northampton, MA. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Could you discuss a bit the site-specific video installation you have up now in the Amherst Biennial?

Before the Drop is a site-specific video installation projected into a cramped 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator inside a decommissioned school. The unusual setting for the work was made possible by the launch of the Amherst Biennial, which runs through December 5. The Biennial presents the work of 44 New England artists in both “expected and unexpected places” throughout Amherst, Massachusetts.

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

When I toured the old school to locate a site, I was immediately drawn to the oddly-small freight elevator. It was another empty chamber, like others I’ve been working with for some time now (architectural ruins, natural sites, and inner states): spaces of unknowing and emptiness which contain the preconditions for rich new growth. The compressed nature of the almost-miniature elevator, combined with the glowing reflectivity of its stainless steel walls and floor called to me strongly.

The video projection places two bodies inside the elevator, life-sized and engaged in tactile exploration of themselves and the space of the elevator, which readily translates as any of the myriad psychological, spiritual and practical conditions in which humans find themselves ensnared. Before the Drop speaks to situations over which we have no control, would never willingly choose, and in which we feel lost and trapped.

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

It’s a fully embodied expression of what it means to live inside a body existing in very particular circumstances, in this case, claustrophobic and catastrophic. The bodies face both the physical constraints of the setting, and the almost unbearable conditions of their lives. The video is accompanied by a haunting, mournful soundtrack of polyphonic chant.

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Key to the work is the play between the site and the content of the video. Some spaces open us up, activating all our neurons. Others shut us down, fear clamping our receptivity. What interests me is the way that we, as beings living in physical bodies, experience conditions through our bodies, and the way our bodies are a means to both access and understand that experience and to communicate it to the world around us. Being fully alive means opening to these energetics, letting ourselves respond and react to them. Before the Drop does that.

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Sarah Bliss. Before the Drop. Site-specific installation projecting a
single-channel 9 minute video loop into a 3’ x 2’ x 3’ freight elevator. 2010.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Are you planning any exhibitions of your work in the near future?


Yes, I’ll be part of a three-person show (with Sand T and Allison Paschke), “Exquisite”, curated by Lasse Antonsen, at the University of Dartmouth Art Gallery in New Bedford, MA, January 28 – March 11, 2011.

Sarah Bliss. Time/Light (AA5). 24.75" x 12.25".
Archival pigment print. 2009.
Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

Next April, I’ll be showing work in “Painting with Pictures,” a show curated by David Gibson at ArtJail Gallery in New York.



Would you like to share your contact info with our readers? Do you have website(s) for interested readers to learn more about your work? Are you available for commissioned works? Representing gallery if any?


I can be reached at: bliss@sarahblissart.com

My website is: www.SarahBlissArt.com

I am increasingly interested in developing collaborative projects, and especially welcome contact from parties in that regard. I happily consider commissions.

Painting over the 9,441 marks of one of two wall drawings in Walking-Marking 1.
Vermont Studio Center, 2009. Photo credit: Sarah Bliss

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