Mint

“I have an impatience for most nonfiction, and this is why I create these unlikely objects.”
—Andy Ralph

Andy Ralph was born 1982, in Lake Arrowhead, CA, and earned his BA in Visual Arts (2004) from Point Loma Nazarene University. Andy Ralph’s work alludes to an evolving narrative with quotidian domesticity that straddles the line between function and fiction, subjectivity and banality. Often employing basic household objects and products typically found in discount or hardware stores, he transforms individual, unassuming commodities with a humble function into the most improbable things. Andy Ralph’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the Society of Arts & Crafts in Boston, MA, Aqua Art Wynwood in Miami, FL, Castle House Gallery in Poulsbo, WA, Phantom Gallery in Long Beach, CA, and Spacecraft Gallery, Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA, among other venues. Andy will be included in the upcoming 2010 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. He lives and works in San Diego, and is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

Lawn Chairs

Arrrgghhh

Mike (Lip-Sync)

LP: The Twilight trilogy. Your thoughts??
AR: Well… I really don’t have anything to say. I don’t know much about this trilogy. Except that it’s about attractive teenage vampires, right? And it’s extremely popular, much more than “21 Jump Street”, and I thought I would never see the day.

LP: What’s your favorite thing to do in the San Diego sunshine?
AR: My friend Ashley started teaching a Yoga class in the park on the grass. I’m really enjoying that.

LP: Have you listened to any songs on repeat lately? Which?
AR: Yeah I have. “Gonna Listen To T Rex (All Night Long)” by the Burnt Ones, as well as “Too Young To Burn” by Sonny & the Sunsets.

LP: What sort of concepts does your work deal with?
AR: I’ve been trying for a while now to create objects that will make me laugh my ass off.

LP: Like myself, you were a graphic design major in college. What made you shift your direction to art making?
AR: I don’t think I ever really shifted direction; I still do design work all the time. I’ve just always preferred using tools to build things that I can then look at, touch, smell, listing to, and simply hanging out with.

Don’t forget to check out Andy’s work on his site.

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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries,” Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”

Quick Queries needs your help writing questions to ask the artists that Lindsay interviews. Submit your questions to mintdesignblog (at) gmail (dot) com and Lindsay will ask away. Remember, keep ‘em light and silly.

Quick Queries will be on a short reprieve until September (Lindsay’s getting married!!!), then will be starting back up with your questions in tow.

Steph Walker is an artist and graphic designer who gets paid in food, money, and tee shirts to figure stuff out for you because that’s what she’s good at.

SW: Sticks & Stones & Ice Cream Cones (The Craft Book for Children) by Phyllis Fiarotta 1973

SW: Worst: Bulk soggy yellow pickles. Tolerable: Anything dill with enough garlic from the supermarket. Best: Fresh made pickles from a NY deli.

SW: It’s a pet peeve of mine when people listen to their music on the subway, but my favorite song right now is “A Cold Freezin’ Night” by The Books.

SW: It has changed my priorities and made me want to do more art based work on my own. I have less desire to work for a studio and more reasons to sit at home and work on crazy stuff.

SW: Art and design are separate things for me when it’s the difference between an art show and a design job, but design skills are used when I make art, and art skills are used when I do design work. Only each end product is for a different purpose. Since they’re coming from the same place (me) they’re going to be similar in approach. But, the client design work is more calculated, the art work is more free.

Don’t forget to check out more of Steph’s work on his website!
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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries”, Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”

Andre Woodward is a contemporary artist based in Huntington Beach. He achieved his MFA in Sculpture from Cal State Long Beach, and has shown his work in Long Beach, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. His work functions not as a single stagnant moment, or instance, but as a function of infinite moments, each one unique and dependent on an infinite number of variables unique to the viewer, the time of viewing, and the context of viewing.

My Little Underground, 2008
H26” x W26” x D20”
Olive Tree, Asphalt, Mortar, Steel, MP3 Player, Audio Electronics

It So Hard, 2008
H18” x W36” x D18”
Cement, Ficus Tree

PSYCHOCANDY, 2008
H96” x W72” x D72”
Bonsai trees, speakers, mp3
players, electronics, pump, hose,
grow lights, steel

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LP: Cake vs. pie. Go:
AW: Cookies preferably chocolate chocolate chip. Cake and pie really do nothing for me, but I’m not one to turn away dessert.

LP: If you could send a video of one scene of your life into a space capsule, what would it be? Would there be a song playing in the video? Which?
AW: I would say Christmas of 1986 when I open my SDF1 from Santa. All the Christmas’ prior to that my older brother and I had received the same gift from Santa, so this was the first gift I got that I acually gift I wanted. Of course the intro to Robotech would be playing.

LP: As summer approaches, I can’t help but crave coconut Popsicle. Do you get any warm weather summer food cravings?
AW: Well every day I hear the Ice Cream Man drive by I seriously contemplate running him down, but then I remember I’m 33. Though, I often crave Jell-O Pudding  Pops, but sadly I have no idea where to get them.

LP: How has your art progressed into your current body of work?
AW: About six years ago I started thinking about the integration of technology and nature. Initially I was considering these two things as opposing forces. Eventually, my observations lead me to consider the work as a symbiotic relationship between nature and technology. But, because nature and technology don’t necessarily rely on one another that didn’t really fit. The more and more I looked at things the more the clearer it became that these aren’t really two separate things anymore. Our environment is a meld of both. Our new nature is no longer nature in the traditional sense; it is street lights, asphalt, and power lines. That’s where my work is now.

LP: What sort of planning / conceptualizing goes into your work? It seems to have an almost architectural design to it.
AW: I plan everything, but my work is engineered to have a life of its own. I have to say that I am not interested in making objects. To me objects are stagnant representations that quickly become artifacts or junk that quickly loses relevance with contemporary society. This is why most of my work is alive. Rather than being only a representation of something it is its own entity that changes with time.
It is natural that you see aspects of Architectural Design. The work is based on ideas of infrastructure and superstructure. I am fascinated with our environment and architecture is a huge part of that.

Don’t forget to check out more of Andre’s work on his website!
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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries”, Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”

I asked artist J Noland to give me a short bio for this post. His response was, “Are you familiar with West Side Story? It’s been a little something like that.”

Forging faith

Grave

Television

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LP: So J, what are your thoughts on outerspace?

JN: I am waiting for prices to come down. But yes, the answer is yes.

LP: Any guilty pleasures?

JN: Me? No. A few innocent ones though: bang snaps, binging on kheer, the videos of coldsteel.com, lean, setting leg-traps, non sequiturs, natural history, pornography, napping, watching my lady eat steak tartar (I’m a vegetarian), iconoclasm, mid-day coffee and fish stick sandwiches, ornithology, killing plants, pseudo-sciences, NPR, the musical stylings of mtume, weightlifting, scotch, all things Swayze, infomercials, and compulsively tweeting (@uradnza).

LP: What’s your favorite song to sing at the top of your lungs to?

JN: Phil Collins’ 1981 classic I Missed Again. I substitute the word “Michigan” for “Missed Again” – it’s regional, it’s a travesty.

LP: What sort of concepts to you consistently go back to in your work?

Guilty pleasures.

LP: How does your process inform your work.

Matt Bradley could better answer this question; he fabricates the majority of my work for me.

J and Lindsay are both participating in a San Diego art show this Saturday called Endless Summer. If you happen to be in San Diego, stop by Suture and check it out!

Don’t forget to check out more of J’s work on his website!
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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries”, Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”

Shawn Smith was born in 1972 in Dallas, TX where he attended Arts Magnet High School and Brookhaven College before graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, MO with a BFA in Printmaking in 1995. Smith received his MFA in Sculpture from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2005. He has received artist-in-residencies from the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA and the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. In 1996, Smith was a recipient of the Clare Hart DeGolyer grant from the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2006, he was commissioned to create a monumental public sculpture in San Francisco, CA. Smith’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in France. Smith currently resides in Austin, Texas and is represented by Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas and d. berman gallery in Austin.

Everett

Double Dahl

Shrodinger’s Hat

Cassandra Smith is an artist and curator working in Milwaukee, WI. She graduated in 2006 from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design with a degree in sculpture. After graduating, Cassandra co-owned the now defunct Armoury Gallery which exhibited contemporary work by local and national emerging artists. She has since curated several shows in the Milwaukee area. Among other places, her work has been show at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Hotcakes Gallery, Paper Boat Gallery and the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts.

Fish

Snack Cakes

left: Antelope, right: Coyote

LP: Favorite song for 2 p.m. on a sunny day:

CS: I know it’s probably cheating, but all I could come up with was a two-way tie. If I had my choice I’d listen to these two songs back-to-back on a sunny afternoon: Glad Tidings by Van Morrison and The Obvious Child by Paul Simon.

LP: Beach or mountains?

CS: Beach. The mountains are beautiful, but nothing beats swimming.

LP: What’s your all time favorite animated movie?

CS: I basically love all the Miyazaki films I’ve seen, but my favorite is probably Howl’s Moving Castle.

LP: What sort of progressions has your art taken?

CS: The basis of my work started from my first major piece where I decorated store bought snack cakes with sequins. This lead me to explore the link between decoration and preservation which lead me to work with taxidermy. Since then I have additionally added thoughts about creating synthetic camouflage, making patterns based on traditional shrines/mandalas and exploring masculine vs feminine forms of craft to my work. I want to keep working with these ideas, but I am not necessarily bound to working with taxidermy or animals. I want to work with transforming a variety of found objects.

LP: What is your favorite part about art making?

CS: My art is very repetitive, and I enjoy the tediousness of that. The best part of working on a piece is once I’ve figured out the specific pattern I want to create and I can just get into the rhythm of gluing and painting. That’s the point when I can put on some music or a dvd I’ve seen a million time and just relax and enjoy the process of making the work.

Don’t forget to check out more of Cassandra’s work on her website!

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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries”, Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”