My interview with Karen Shaw, courtesy
Studio Focus: Karen Shaw
Karen Shaw in her studio. Photo credits: Michael Parada Castro
The artist KAREN SHAW
featured in the collection of the
International Collage Center
in conversation with writer and artist
JANET GOLEAS
Janet Goleas
You were a young
mother living on Long Island in the 1970s. It was a heady time in
America—the Vietnam War, civil rights, the rise of feminism. What was
life like for you then?
Karen Shaw
Well, I married right
after high school and we settled in Flushing, Queens. When I was a
junior at Hunter College I had my first son, David, and had to drop out
for a year. The next year I got my BFA. By the time I had my second son,
Stephan, we bought a house in the suburbs of Long Island. I was
reluctant to live in the suburbs, but I didn't like Flushing so much
either—it was neither urban nor suburban.
JG
Did you want to live in the city?
KS
Yes. The suburbs were boring to
me, but it was nice for the children to have a yard to play in and to
have kids nearby. I made my peace with the area. I became a part of a
liberal political group opposed to the war. There was so much
controversy and foment at the time. I was involved with civil rights
and, a bit later, women's rights. This kept me engaged and busy, but I
wasn't yet focused on making art.
JG
In what ways were you culturally involved?
KS
I went into the city nearly every Wednesday—the LIRR had a reduced ticket on Wednesdays—they called it Ladies' Day.
The Women's Movement ended that! I'd go to museums or just absorb the
crowds and the urban hustle. I started taking art magazines out of the
library. When my youngest started preschool I signed up for a life
drawing class in the neighborhood. That was the beginning.
JG
Was there a turning point—a marker that you can identify as the point at which you became engaged as an artist?
KS
I got a job working for a Vice
President at NBC who lived in my town. He was working on a study on the
effects of television violence on children. NBC didn't seem all that
serious about the study—they hired some women in town who were able to
work for very little money during mornings and afternoons. I'd bring
Stephan with me—he was 2 1/2 then. We reviewed questionnaires that were
filled out by teachers and the parents of the boys being studied. We
assigned a two digit code to each questionnaire depending on whether the
response was positive or negative. I learned from this experience how
subjective statistics are, and how mutable language is.
JG
Their only subjects were boys?
KS
Yes! And it enraged me and all
the women I worked with—it was just as the women's movement had arrived
in the suburbs. Unlike NBC, we took the study very seriously.
JG
How did this coincide with your early work?
KS
My earliest work in this vein was after the NBC job. I called it Summations,
and it was just that. I took poems by William Blake, W. B. Yeats and
Shelley and summed them up by giving a number to each letter of the
words in the poem. Then I added them up to reach one final number. The
idea was that if you grasped this number you could possess the essence
of the poem.
JG
And that notion is...ridiculous?
KS
Yes—all you really had was a
number. I was trying to call attention to the fact that numbers were
taking over our lives. With two young children at home, if I called the
doctor I had to give them the chart number, my area code and telephone
number, my social security number and my zip code. And, of course, the
arbitrary coding of those questionnaires—it was all sort of alarming.
JG
That such painstaking work could result in such beautiful irony is fascinating.
Summation of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 3 ways, 1973. St. James Bible,
ledger, adding machine tapes, ink on wood book stand. 20 x 42 x 10 inches.
KS
Yes, there was humor involved. After summing up some of the finest poems in English literature I turned to The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
and summed it up. Since this piece was so large and took so long, I
noticed that many words equaled the same number. It should have been
obvious but it wasn't until I did this work that I realized this. I
started collecting the words in a ledger book and that became the basis
for Summantics.
JG
Like your Rosetta stone.
KS
Yes, absolutely. Once I had a
numerical dictionary I could turn the whole process around and turn
numbers back into language. I thought this was much more humorous and
humane.
JG
What did that lead to?
KS
Well, I could take almost
anything with numbers and turn it into language. The most natural thing
was to take things at hand—like my shopping receipts—and turn the
numbers into words.
JG
I love this body of work and the
ideas within it—the elevation of "women's work"—like grocery
shopping—and its elevation to an art form was brilliant, and so timely
given the cultural and political mood of the country.
KS
It was very exciting to find out
what I could make it say. I also translated baseball cards and sports
photos from magazines and newspapers. I didn't have a studio. I did all
this work on my dining room table.
JG
The coincidence of Gematria—the
cabbalistic system of interpreting scripture through numerical
assignments to letters—and your work is interesting. Were you aware of
it at this time?
KS
I had no notion of Kabalah or
Gematria at the time. After I had worked with this idea for some time I
began researching theories of language and linguistics. I only
discovered it then. I liked knowing that my work had a basis in
something so old and mysterious, but it was an absolute coincidence. I
grew up in a secular home, so this sort of Jewish esoterica had no
meaning for me.
JG
The Summantics were sometimes compiled in boxes or vitrines. These assembled word pieces have a very scientific feel.
KS
I loved the closeness of the
words Etymology and Entomology. I used to get them confused. The study
of insects and the study of words seemed like a perfect
transformation—my work melded into another form. I bought entomological
pins and boxes designed for insect collections. I printed lists of words
on clear acetate and pinned them in the boxes. The idea of "pinning
down" a word intrigued me because words are really so hard to actually
pin down. I called these works my Entomological/Etymological Collections—they
were words of a given number. One of the boxes was filled with only
words that equaled 100. They're arranged into various parts of speech so
that all the adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs in all tenses are
grouped in separate sections. The words appear to float in space because
the acetate is basically invisible. Entomological pins are very
beautiful, by the way.
Etymological/Entomological collection =84, 2013. Cigar box, entomological pins, words on film, 9 x 6 x 9 inches.
JG
And the cigar boxes were another tour de force idea.
KS
They were also a lucky find. I
found cigars whose brand names were actually a number as opposed to a
name. I've found several of these number/name boxes and I still work
with them as I find them.
Unraveling Series, Baseball gown Extra Large, 2004. Collage, 20 x 16 inches.
JG
You mention the baseball cards
earlier, and in your work you've utilized sports metaphors and imagery
over and over. Is organized sports related to politics in your mind?
KS
I was never interested in
sports, nor were my father or brothers. My sons aren't interested
either. On occasion my husband watched baseball or football, but he
always did so alone. My use of sports imagery was to give it another
meaning. In fact, the series of works I did with sports figures were
called Additional Meanings. I used the numbers emblazoned on
football jerseys to find words; to interpret them as if they were
hieroglyphs. Later, I devised a method of deconstructing sports shirts. I
wanted to subvert the macho image of the athlete.
Unraveling, Installation view, Wurtembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart Germany,
unravelled t-shirts on mannequins, 2002.
Baseball gown, Jetter and Basketball gown, Lin, 2012,
installation view. Unravelled t-shirts and wire.
JG
In the Unraveling series you literally unraveled that macho image.
KS
I was looking for a new way
to address sports, as I had been invited to a show in Germany. I was
told the space was quite large and most of my work is rather small. I
bought a few t-shirts with numbers on them thinking I would somehow link
them with language in a way that worked with my system.
Mysteriously—and I say that because I really don't know how it
happened—I began to unravel them string by string. They became these
long lacey gowns. I called them "ball gowns" and showed them on male
action-mannequins. They caused quite a stir! I also made collages of
famous sports figures wearing these long, gauzy gowns. I used images
from newspapers and magazines—I saw them as subversive gender-bending
figures.
JG
Your work is filled with ironies
like this, and it is sometimes quite cheeky. This, in combination with
your interest in politics fascinates me.
KS
I wasn't overtly thinking of politics in the 70s and 80s—not with the Summantics.
I was personally involved with Women's Liberation and the anti-war
movement, but it didn't affect my art. In later works, specifically the
work I've done with maps, my interest in politics became overt.
JG
Did Feminism affect your development?
KS
I was very involved in the
Feminist Movement. I joined a consciousness raising group around 1970.
It helped me find the confidence to speak up for what I wanted and
needed to do. We stayed together for years.
JG
How did that confidence manifest itself?
KS
Well, I didn't really know any
artists—male or female—so I didn't know how difficult it could be to get
one's work noticed, let alone exhibited. I basically floundered in.
When I felt I had a body of work to show, I went to SoHo and just walked
into galleries. In those days, you could actually bring in work and get
to see someone without an appointment.
JG
So your first show was at OK Harris—and this was from walking in unannounced and showing your work?
KS
Yes, I had a very fortunate case of beginner's luck.
JG
That's amazing—and groundbreaking. Were your family and friends supportive?
KS
Everyone was so
supportive—especially my husband, who supported me right from the
beginning. When I teach, I tell my students that after having good
work, having a supportive spouse is the next most important thing.
Summantic Receipt,: =933, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink, 11 x 8 1/2 inches.
Summantic Receipt,: =1061, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink, 11 x 8 1/2 inches.
Summantic Receipt,: =1708, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink, 14 x 8 1/2 inches.
JG
What did you exhibit at OK Harris?
KS
I showed enlarged dictionary
pages that I reordered numerically and the cash register receipt poems.
At the time, I remember that Mel Bochner had worked with numbers and
Hannah Darboven had exhibited pages and pages of numbers. She was often
brought up in connection to my work, but I felt we were coming from
very different influences. In reality, there was no one doing anything
similar to what I was doing.
JG
What excited you in the art world—were there any special influences?
KS
I was entranced by any work that
had text. I loved Duane Michaels' work with photos and text—all of
Jasper Johns' alphabets—and Alfred Jensen's symbols. But the greatest
influence on my work was Marcel Duchamp. He and the Dadaists gave me the
confidence to use humor and to amuse. When I first developed what came
to be the Summations and Summantics, originally I did it for my own amusement.
JG
Speaking of Jasper Johns, he was
one of the first artists to elevate the numeral/letter to the status of
subject or visual icon. Your work has a different departure point, but
do you relate to the idea of the word or subset of words as the
subject/object in your work?
KS
Well, I love Johns' use of
stencils and everyday materials; it was such an inspiration to me. And
Alfred Jensen's mystical grids still thrill me. I think of my work as
being a form of translation. I see a list of numbers and just imagine
what they can say and what meaning I can pull out of this bunch of
ciphers.
JG
Both Johns and Rauschenberg were
great collagists, using the methodology in very different ways. How
does the art of collage lend itself to your work and your thinking?
KS
I like collage for the ability
to move things around. To be tentative until everything is just right. I
got my BFA in sculpture and, in my case, I was making assemblage. To
me, collage was just a 2-D form of assemblage.
JG
At some point you were awarded a studio at P. S. 1. in Long Island City.
KS
Yes—having a studio changed my
life completely. Just getting it was another lucky break as it was very
competitive. There, every day there was a community of artists in
residence to talk with and share ideas. A lot of collectors, curators
and gallerists visited from all over the U.S. and Europe. Several were
interested in my work. It gave me an opportunity to travel and exhibit
abroad.
JG
How did your work change under these circumstances?
KS
Around 1981 I had several shows
overlapping, so I had to create a tremendous amount of new work to cover
all those walls at the same time. After that experience I thought I
might never want to see another number again—I felt more like an
accountant than an artist. I stopped doing that work temporarily.
JG
Was it hard to move away from this early, dominant focus?
United Shapes of America, 2011. Painted paper collage, 72 x 48 inches
KS
No, not at all. It opened up a
whole new body of work for me. I was showing so much that I was
traveling all the time and I started looking at maps. I would notice
funny coincidences. Certain shapes were similar—for instance, India and
Texas have almost the same shape and they also have Brahmin bulls in
common. But where one culture worships the animal for its spiritual
value, the other worships it for money. I started looking at the world
in this way. Around the same time I got a job as a visiting artist at
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. They gave me the largest
studio I ever had. I wanted to take advantage of it, so I began making
very large paintings of states. It amused me that Colorado and Wyoming
were just about interchangeable.
JG
And this lead to the Drawing Borders series?
KS
Yes, I was spending more and
more time in Europe and made friends there. My son David was very
interested in maps and was collecting atlases, some of which I brought
him from abroad. I loved the coincidence of shapes and how borders were
conceived—how they change and the politics that created these changes
was fascinating to me. I did a large piece called Terra Cognita
in which I arranged all the sovereign nations of the world in
alphabetical order and selected colors to represent the different
regions of the world. I was still working with the idea of ordering
systems. The installation was very colorful and it attracted a lot of
attention in Paris. I made the work specifically for that show.
JG
That reception must have been wonderful. Was it different showing in Europe than in the U.S.?
KS
Europeans are much more
knowledgeable about geography than Americans are. And they seemed to pay
much more attention and spend more time looking at art. Especially with
my early work, which took time to read and figure out, it seemed to me
that Europeans liked to puzzle through the system. My work has always
been met with enthusiasm in Europe.
JG
Your art is idea-driven, and over time you've migrated through
numerous bodies of related works that are dense with meaning, irony and
political content. Can you discuss the political aspects in your art?
KS
The politics in my early work
was more or less incidental. But with the maps, it became overt. In the
1980s I began worrying about the environment. Acid rain, the destruction
of the rain forests, the death of the Great Lakes and nuclear
proliferation—this was always in the news. I dealt with these issues in
my work. I did installations about environmental disintegration. I
noticed the Great Lakes had a "leafy" look and since they were said to
be dying I likened them to autumn leaves. I did a large installation on
this subject Southampton College. In the Netherlands I did one on
environmental problems in which I deconstructed Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony as part of the sound track.
String of Words, Web, 2006.
Thread, words on film, collage on paper. 24 x 20 inches.
String of Words, Talking Heads, 2004. Heard on the Street
Thread, words on film, collage on paper. 24 x 20". Collage, ink on paper, 24 x 20 inches.
JG
How did the String of Words series come about?
KS
It was accidental, but was also a
reaction to the technological world. When cell phones started to
proliferate, overhearing disjointed bits and pieces of conversation
became an everyday soundtrack. I had a lot of leftover words from
previous work that were something like these broken phrases. I thought
of stringing them together to represent this new sort of urban language.
I found the sheets of heads in Chinatown—they were like talking heads
to me.
Body Language Series, Golden Ear, 2004. Painted latex, acupuncture needles, words on film, 12 x 9 x 4 inches.
JG
You've used other body parts, too. Your series Body Language is such a perfect confluence of idea and form.
KS
My son Stephan was dating a
student of acupuncture and for my birthday they gave me a rubber hand
that the students used to practice on. All the acupuncture points were
numbered. It was another opportunity to use my system. I printed out
words on clear acetate, pinned them on long acupuncture needles and
applied them to the correct numbered point. They moved in the air and
gave a kinetic aspect to the work that I liked very much. After buying
all the body parts I could find, I found life size mannequin parts to
work with. I studied acupuncture charts to get the points in the right
places. I saw them as a form of poetry; my system overlaid on an ancient
healing system.
Masterpierces, Christ, 2011. Painted collage on canvas, acupuncture needles, words on film, 16 x 20 inches.
JG
And the Masterpierces?
KS
These came directly out of the Body Language series. I chose works of art that seemed in need of healing. Mantegna's St. Sebastian,
images of Christ on the cross, Frida Kahlo in her hospital bed, etc.
It gave me a new way of working with coincidences in art history.
JG
That your name, Karen Shaw, equals 100 is the greatest irony! You use it on your website—karenshaw100.com. That must have been an intoxicating coincidence.
KS
I loved that—I found it out early on, when I first started adding up words. It made me laugh.
JG
Thank you, Karen. Your body of
work is fascinating and unique—it's a treat to hear some of the back
stories and to learn more about your development. I can't wait to see
what's next.
KS
Thanks—it's been a pleasure.
Janet Goleas is an artist, curator and writer. Her popular blog, Blinnk.blogspot.com, offers insights, interviews and ideas on contemporary art in and around New York City and the east end of Long Island.
thank you INTERNATIONAL COLLAGE CENTER
