Saturday, October 19, 2013

Karen Shaw at the International Collage Center

My interview with Karen Shaw, courtesy 


Studio Focus: Karen Shaw

Karen Shaw in her studio
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. 

Karen Shaw, Summation of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 3 ways, 1973
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.


Karen Shaw, Etymological/Entomological collection =84, 2013
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. 


Karen Shaw, Unraveling Series, Baseball gown Extra Large, 2004
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.


Karen Shaw, Unraveling, Installation view, Wurtembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart Germany, unravelled t-shirts on mannequins, 2002
Unraveling, Installation view, Wurtembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart Germany, 
unravelled t-shirts on mannequins, 2002.

Karen Shaw, 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. 


Karen Shaw, Summantic Receipt,: =933, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink.
Summantic Receipt,: =933, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink, 11 x 8 1/2 inches.

Karen Shaw, Summantic Receipt,: =1061, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink.
Summantic Receipt,: =1061, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink, 11 x 8 1/2 inches.

Karen Shaw, Summantic Receipt,: =1708, 1976. Collage on ledger paper, ink.
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?


Karen Shaw, United Shapes of America, 2011. Painted paper collage, 72 x 48 inches
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.


Karen Shaw, String of Words, Web, 2006. Thread, words on film, collage on paper. 24 x 20 inches.
                                                                                                                                            String of Words, Web, 2006. 
                                                                                                Thread, words on film, collage on paper. 24 x 20 inches.


Karen Shaw, String of Words, Talking Heads. Thread, words on film, collage on paper. 24 x 20 inches.
Karen Shaw, Heard on the Street. Collage, ink 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.


Karen Shaw, Body Language Series, Golden Ear, 2004. Painted latex, acupuncture needles, words on film, 12 x 9 x 4 inches.
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. 

Karen Shaw, Masterpierces, Christ, 2011, painted collage on canvas, acupuncture needles, words on film, 16 x 20 inches.
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




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