Zoe Messinger:
My name is Zoe and thank you so much for coming to our third session of the Virtual Studio Salon Series. Today, we're going to be hearing about three Brandeis Fine Arts professors and their artistic careers. Some of their adventures at Brandeis and their vision for the future of arts education. This event is being hosted by the Brandeis Arts Network. For those of you who aren't aware, this is a network of Brandeis alumni that encourages professionals and enthusiasm ... Excuse me, enthusiasts to engage and experience in the work of fellow Brandeisians on campus and beyond. Stay connected to the Arts Network, we will have a link that we'll be putting in the chat at the end of the event.
Zoe Messinger:
Then I'm going to give you guys a quick intro to our panelists today. We are very lucky to have Professor Alfredo Gisholt. He joined the Brandeis family in 2004. He's an associate professor of Fine Arts and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. His colorful work intersects still life, landscape and interiors and welcomes the cohabitation of opposites into a single panel. Next we have Professor Joseph Wardwell. He joined Brandeis as an adjunct professor in January of 2001. He's currently an associate professor of painting at Brandeis and lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. His layered work combines serene landscapes and rock lyrics which commingle to create a narrative. Danielle, I'm so sorry.
Danielle Friedman:
I will take it from here. Let's talk about Joe. His layered work combined serene landscapes with rock lyrics, which commingle to create a narrative between art and music history. Finally, we have Professor Susan Lichtman. She is the first female professor to join the Fine Arts Department. Lichtman, join Brandeis in 1980. She is the Charles Blum chair in the arts of design, and is also a professor of Fine Arts. Those two things go hand in hand, I believe. Lichtman paints and lives in Rehoboth. Did I say it correctly Susan? Rehoboth? Massachusetts. Rhode Island, isn't it Massachusetts? Sorry, you're muted.
Susan Lichtman:
Right near the border of Rhode Island.
Danielle Friedman:
Border? Amazing. She is a figurative painter whose compositions in oil, acrylic and gouache, focus on recollections of light within domestic spaces. Today's event will be hosted by three of our brand new Arts Alumni Network members. I am Daniella Friedman. I'm living in Iraq, Israel and I graduated in 2009 in studio art from Brandeis. I'm an artist, educator and advisor. We have Alison Judd. She graduated from Brandeis in 2004. She majored in painting and art history. She went on to receive her postbac certificate from Brandeis in 2005. She is a practicing artist and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her family.
Danielle Friedman:
Finally, we have Zoe Messinger. She graduated from Brandeis in 2013, with a double major in art history and business. While not an artist, she currently works at an art consulting firm that specializes in hospitality design. She's living in Chicago. Right now, we're going to have a short, around 35 minutes, a pre filmed virtual studio tour. We're going to get to see the inside world of Alfredo, Susan and Joe. Then we're going to have a live Q&A panel session discussion. If there are any questions at all that you would like to ask, you can put them in the chat box. I will get to them at the end of the presentation and we can get there for the Q&A session. I would also like to mention that this event is being recorded for future viewings. Those who couldn't make it today can tune in. With that being said, we're going to get started. Sit back, be comfortable, enjoy. This is a really special video that we're about to tune into.
Alison Judd:
Hi Alfredo.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Hi, Alison.
Alison Judd:
Nice to see you. Thanks for having us in your studio for this kind of next of our Salon Series, where we'll be focusing on faculty at Brandeis. Alfredo, can we start by having you tell us where you were born and where you're living now?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I was born and raised in Mexico City. I was there until I was 16 years old when my family moved to Miami. I went to high school in Miami and community college. I then returned to Mexico to go to the academy. I finished the academy and came back to the US for graduate school. I ended up getting a degree from Florida International University and went to graduate school at BU. Since that time, I've been in Boston. With a little bit of an exception, I took a year off, where I traveled to be a guard at the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. That's before kids. I returned to Boston. I started teaching at BU and that's when the opportunity came up to do Senior Studio at Brandeis. Then I was hired that, I think, the summer after that one class.
Alison Judd:
Can you tell us what your earliest memory of being exposed to art is?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I do remember going to exhibitions in museums, both with school and with my parents, as part of the daily routine. My parents also there were some friends that were in the creative field. It almost seems like we were surrounded by it. My dad is an engineer, my mother is an educator and they're not artists. There were no artist in the family. But it always seemed to be whether it's subject or activity that we were exposed to and a part of.
Alison Judd:
Why don't we get into your work a little. Can you tell us briefly about your work and what you're interested in exploring. We'll take a look at it a little bit later in the interview. Maybe we can talk about it.
Alfredo Gisholt:
I would call myself a perceptual painter. A lot of the things that I paint are observed, the way that then I depict them is not in a naturalistic way process of abstraction and interpretation. I believe in the transformation that happens when one does that. I draw a lot. I take my little sketchbook to a lot of different places and I'd look at things and then I transform them and come up with abstraction of what I see. Then I use that frame of mind to make the images that I make. They do have a tendency to be about the accumulation of both pictorial elements and almost like emotional experiences that I tried to imbue the paintings with that. With both a perceptual reality where they seem believable, but also emotional component that becomes a content.
Alfredo Gisholt:
As an equivalent, there are all of these empty lots in Mexico City where people just throw things, where things accumulate. Maybe an old mattress and a sofa, and tires. As kids, we used to play in those empty lots. It's a great place to play hide and go seek. They may also be have a little bit of an element of danger in them, because there may be broken glass. I remember being fascinated by those spaces. Looking through some photographs that I've taken the last time I visited Mexico, I saw a lot of photographs of ... That I'd taken a lot of photographs of those. Diego, my son, he says, "Oh, it looks just like your paintings."
Alison Judd:
Where is an ideal place for a viewer to experience your work?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I love going to people's studios and to see the work at the place where it's made. I think when somebody sees my work in the studio, it almost feels like a part of it, an extension of it.
Alison Judd:
I've been fortunate to be in your studio for multiple visits and see your paintings on the wall. I always have these really fun memories of your big paintings, which are larger than me and such an experience to view and take in. Then often, you have this opposite wall with tons of small paintings. I don't know if you do right now, but that's always like-
Alfredo Gisholt:
I do.
Alison Judd:
... one of my favorite experiences is being in your studio and also all your plants. How did you find your studio space? What do you like about it?
Alfredo Gisholt:
Well, I found it through a fellow Brandeis alumni, John Thompson, who sort of as a project that he renovated the building and renovated it with the idea of, basically giving space to artists. I like how close it is to both school and home. Over the years, it's been just space that I've been here. I've been here over 10 years now. It feels like home in a way.
Alison Judd:
Maybe we can start having you show us a little bit around your studio and I can ask you a few questions well where walking around with you.
Alfredo Gisholt:
This is my studio. I was sitting right there. These are my books company. Yeah. It's a narrow entrance and then it opens up. I have a couple of stations that I been using. It's a little bit of a mess. Alison, you've caught me at a time where I have an exhibition in Houston coming up.
Alison Judd:
Congratulations.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Thank you. I took a bunch of work. When the studio is sort of emptied out, I started working on some drawings. I've been making these drawings this week. I'll show them to you. We come into the main space. That's my painting wall. I have two paintings that I've been working on. The one on the left, I have just started and the one on the right is a little bit more developed. It's been on the studio wall for a while, a little bit longer. I made these drawings, maybe a little bit under a year ago. I've been using these as a way to inform the new paintings.
Alfredo Gisholt:
I'll show you. This is what you alluded to. This is one of those walls of small paintings that you know it's become a way for me to work. These are my plants. They also become subject for my things to look at. Day of the Dead in Mexico has always been one of those holidays that has always been fascinating. I have a lot of little skeletons and little figurines. I paint from those so they become the subject.
Alison Judd:
Can you tell us a little bit more about the materials that you're working with? I know you mentioned the drawings in the gouache.
Alfredo Gisholt:
This is my palette. I think it is the same design as yours. I painted oil. This is all my oil setup. I was working on these little paintings, just not too long ago. This is just from the other day. I have another little table here to support that one, ink charcoal. I have some gel medium. What I do is I color paper. I make these paper samples and I spread them all over the studio and then bring them here and start to process them and reprocessing, cut them up. I'll come up to one of these. What they have brought me is a way of thinking about pictorial space that is not just about illusion that creates his own pictorial reality. They're very much process driven. I guess these are some of those materials.
Alison Judd:
What are the typical day look like for you?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I start early in the morning depending what's going on at home. I get here, anywhere from between 8:00 and 9:00. I stay till 6:30 depending on what's going on at home. If the kids ... My kids are a little older now and then they have a little bit more independence. It depends but I try to put in a 10-hour day whenever I can.
Alison Judd:
You mentioned a little bit about what drew you to Brandeis. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Alfredo Gisholt:
When I was in graduate school at BU, there were three students in my class that came from Brandeis. They were the best prepared, they we're ready to go. I was just moving in my stuff. Brandeis alums came into the studio, and it was like they had the studio set up by the afternoon. It felt like a real place of activity of really rigorous practice. Then you think about the wonderful idea of social justice that permeates through every department in the university where it feels like what it is that we're doing and all of these different disciplines, shares in that goal of making the world a more equitable, better place. That was very striking.
Alison Judd:
Can you talk a little bit more how teaching at Brandeis has influenced your path as an artist?
Alfredo Gisholt:
For one, it gives me the opportunity to share my experience. In that conversation, it's always a two way street. As I share it with students, it's almost like I'm learning simultaneously. It is such an integral part of my life sharing with students at Brandeis that I can't imagine my life without it. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's not an influence, it is part of who I am, to see people make things that were did not exist before they were made. It's a wonderful thing to participate in that. There's a joy in that. I've been fortunate to be at Brandeis for a very long time. Like I said, it's really just kind of ... It's part of who I am.
Alison Judd:
As a student, even though we were only there for four years, it's still such an impact that the professor's have. I'm sure if we feel like Brandeis is such an important part of who we are, I can only imagine for professors that it must be even exponentially more for you to see that growth happening every day. I think it's unique to Brandeis in so many ways. That this culture of this back and forth learning from one another faculty is student. What is your favorite thing about Brandeis? It might be hard to answer.
Alfredo Gisholt:
First of all, there's real commitment that we have in our department and across the university, to go deep into the subjects. To really explore them, interrogate them, investigate them, celebrate them. That depth of inquiry is always that something that I've really responded at Brandeis. The fact that I have students that have all the interested in all of these different disciplines come into the drawing studio with that body of knowledge and interest and make a drawing. For somebody studying biology, drawing fruit is very different than somebody studying psychology. That totality of accumulated simultaneous experiences, events that happens year after year.
Alison Judd:
It's been so nice to talk with you about this. Thank you so much for taking the time for the studio, Gisholt. We're excited to hear more from you.
Danielle Friedman:
Let's start with just some basic bio. Where were you born and where are you living now?
Joe Wardwell:
I was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1972. But I don't really have much connection there because my dad was getting his PhD and we left and moved to the West Coast probably when I was about two, I think in 1974. I really grew up primarily in two different spots on the border of Washington, Idaho, a small college town called Pullman, Washington, where my dad taught at Washington State University. Then we moved to Bozeman, Montana, where my dad taught at Montana State University. We lived there for a while. Then we went back to Pullman, Washington, Washington State University. I primarily stayed there throughout, up until I went to college.
Joe Wardwell:
I live in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. It's the neighborhood that I landed in in 1997 when I moved to the East Coast from the West. I love it. It's a great neighborhood. It's great. Then my studio is about three and a half miles, four miles, that's to the east of there. It's right on the corner of Dorchester and Roxbury. As far as my favorite couple of things about the studio, I don't know if I can pivot you around for a second.
Danielle Friedman:
Yeah, for sure.
Joe Wardwell:
You guys can see I have a view of the city, straight down-
Danielle Friedman:
Wow, that's an amazing view, Joe.
Joe Wardwell:
I know. I look out downtown and see the city and I really love being in the city. I hate it when artists are pushed further and further out into the suburbs or out into small industrial towns. The view is great, but it's also like being a part of the city. I love being part of Roxbury. I ride my bike here all the time. I just love moving through the city on a bike and feeling the neighborhoods. I think it definitely becomes a part of who I am and who I am as an artist.
Danielle Friedman:
What is your earliest memory of being exposed to art?
Joe Wardwell:
The Museum at MSU in Bozeman. We visited it a lot during, I think, my first summer there. I think I would have been probably in between first grade and second grade. Because it really exposed to a lot of what is sort of in a negative way thought of as Western art. I've never really been able to let that go. You know what I mean? I think that even through studying art history and going to graduate school and teaching and living on the East Coast, I think there's something about that relationship to landscape and space and painting that is still core to who I am. I didn't have a lot of exposure to original art. I think we went to D.C. and see the Smithsonian I think, maybe 6th, 7th grade or something like that. But those are my first core memories.
Danielle Friedman:
Tell us briefly about your work.
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah. If I briefly say, I think that it develops slowly over years of practice. But I would say that if you take the idea of three types of painters, if you thought of a landscape painter, an abstract painter, and someone who just painted tax paintings, you just take those three genres, you jam them together, that's what I end up doing the process. I create a landscape painting, and then I create an abstract painting on top of it and then I put text on top of that. Then I peel it all off together, and then it's a done painting. With the inside that, that's a sandwich explanation of how to make a sandwich explanation about my work. But I would also say that to me, I'm really interested in something that is not harmonious. I mean, I'm interested in something that has a lot of vibe. Like you said earlier, that has a lot of tension with itself.
Joe Wardwell:
I've always been a maximalist. I respond to that visual density. I feel like ... I won't say that's my mission, but I think it's also like ... It's like how you mentioned earlier with the bike riding. I mean, it's how we experience life. The idea that there's one reality that we experiences and we seek that out now. But because the norm is that we have many different realities simultaneously fighting against each other at any given moment in our lives. It's not like I just look at a beautiful landscape and I'm solely inside that landscape and that's all I think about. There's text messages going off, there's the car running, there's all this chaos around us all the time. I think that ... I just bring all that with me to the paintings.
Danielle Friedman:
How do you choose the phrase that you want to paint and where do you find the phrases, the texts that you paint?
Joe Wardwell:
That's an easy one. I just keep lists of stuff. They're mostly from music. They're mostly from songs, even though now I'm venturing out into collaborating with poets. Just keep lists. Like this. I just keep a little list and then I break up the cadence. This is from the Beastie Boys, because what you see you might not get and I was thinking that this is like ... Then just thinking about how I do the ... Oh, maybe it's a vertical painting and then just trying to figure out how the cadences is. I just have tons and tons of stuff. A lot of stuff never gets used. It's same thing with abstract ideas exist in here as well. Good times that haven't happened yet, but will.
Joe Wardwell:
There's another one. There's a Flaming Lips one, that made two paintings, all we've ever had is now. I made two paintings that based on that. This is a large work on paper. They probably going to just see a tiny bit of it. The landscape is Lake Magog up in Quebec. Then the lyric is creature comforts makes it painless, which feels like apropos for the times, but it's also from a band from Montreal.
Danielle Friedman:
Let's go on a tour.
Joe Wardwell:
Okay, okay. Cool, cool. This is actually a three color stencil where you can see there's ... This is a blend and then this blue is one color. This green is another color. Then the yellow was a third stencil that came down. Then this is ... It'll make sense in another set. Here's another ... A lot of times I try to reuse the stencils. Then here is another work on paper that's like 52 by probably maybe six and a half feet. These are tests. I have two sets of three. These are sex, God, money paintings. This I'll show you in a second when we go to my antics. Here you can see these are the other ones in progress.
Joe Wardwell:
I won't run you through this, I'll just show you the fancy stuff. That's the library. This is the actual internal space that we're working with. It's like this beautiful almost modernist Cathedral. It's like this brutalist, modern, architectural building from the '60s. It's been redeveloped and there's all this gorgeous light coming along in here. These are the three panels that we're using. Then this is what the three murals will look like. We're all using images from Roxbury. This is the youth writers poms. We'll be on the top of it. Then there'll be the abstract layer that riffs off some of the architectural elements in the library already. Then this is ... The large text is in the key is poem over the top of it.
Danielle Friedman:
Let's talk a little bit about Brandeis, Joe.
Joe Wardwell:
Sure.
Danielle Friedman:
What drew you to Brandeis?
Joe Wardwell:
Well, they gave me a job, in 2001. It's fine. I'm now on my 20th year. I still feel like a young faculty but been there 20 years. I came out to interview and I remember, I met Mike Flied, who was the custodian of Goldman Schwartz at the time. He was so positive to me and he was just a great guy. I met with Susan and Tom Bells, and Tori and Graham. I remember thinking. I was like ... It was so easy, was so chill, it was just really relaxed. I was like, "This is a great vibe. I like these people. I want this job." Then Mike Flied as I was leaving, he was like, "I hope you get the job, man."
Joe Wardwell:
I was like, "Oh, I really want it." I mean, it was just adjunct, but it was just such a cool, fun place. Working with a Postbac was such a dynamic opportunity for a young person. I was only 29 I think when I started. 28, or 29. When there was opportunities for promotion or other jobs, people asked me to apply and I felt so supported by my colleagues. Yourself and other members I've been working with amazing students. Then like to be able to start the Brandeis in Sienna program. Basically, came up with that out of thin air.
Danielle Friedman:
How has teaching Brandeis influenced your path as an artist?
Joe Wardwell:
Teaching in general has really helped me have the space to make work. But on the deeper, more philosophical, working with some amazing people from Graham, to Susan, to Tory, to Alfredo and now to Sonia and Shaida, and Lauren. I think that I've just been around so many great artists that have influenced. I feel much more confident in my own studio making work because I know who I am, and where I stand and the work that I've been around. Being with so many great students over the years too, it just that builds. It really allows me to be more myself and more individual in my own studio.
Joe Wardwell:
I was always like imposter syndrome when I was younger, where I was like, "Oh, I don't really know what I'm talking about. I shouldn't be a real teacher." I always felt like Brandeis, that at any moment, someone was going to be like, "You, you're not supposed to be here. Okay, who let this guy in here? You got to get him out of here. You're not supposed to be a teacher." But at a certain point, you get to a point where you're just explaining stuff to students. You're like, "Oh, my gosh! I really know what I'm talking about." I don't know when that switch was, but at certain point you're like, "Oh, I do know what I'm talking about." Then coming back into my own studios kind of like, "I know what I'm talking about."
Danielle Friedman:
Thank you so much for showing us around your studio, for sharing your experience with us, for talking about your work.
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'm so psyched to talk to you.
Susan Lichtman:
I'm in the studio that we built about this little house and big studios here in the woods, and I've been there for 30 years. I went to Brown University and then went right to Yale for an MFA in painting at a time when not many people were painting. I think I was one of the only brown art students who was painting. Everyone else was doing sculpture and conceptual art. It was the '70s. Right from Yale, I thought, there's no way I can really know how to teach. I don't have anything really. I need to just be in the world. But I applied for jobs, and I got this job at Brandeis. It was a one year job. I was the first woman to be hired full time. It was really the art historians who wanted to bring in. All the studio faculty were men.
Susan Lichtman:
I really was not part of a crowd that they just did not really want me there. That was hard because I was not exactly welcomed by the other artists. The art historians were amazing. I love them and I don't know. Somehow, I stayed. I kept getting renewed and other people left and suddenly this place ... They were supposed to be a one year job and it snapped in my life. Because I came from a liberal arts school, not an art school, I really identify with the Brandeis students who have so many interests. I mean, they're coming from sciences in the social sciences and double majors in art history and literature and I get that. I get that it takes a long time to somehow get to feel confident as an artist. At a certain point in the early '90s, we started the postbac program for students to just spend a little extra time, to really have more time to do their work. That's been great. It's now like 27 years running.
Zoe Messinger:
Do you remember the first time that you were really exposed to art?
Susan Lichtman:
I think the first art show I saw was a pop art show at the museum. Not pop art, sorry, up art show from the Museum of Modern Art. It's all about looking. I think I really just fell in love with this kind of the spectacle of painting back then. When my parents moved me out of New York, and I spent a lot of time drawing because I was lonely living in the country. I started to draw a lot from life. I started to draw my house and the things in the house. I started to really love paintings of interiors and see paintings as just this threshold to another world. I love Dutch interior painting and French painting. Chardin's domestic scenes and so
Susan Lichtman:
I kind of fell in love with old pictures and deep pictorial space and the way painters paint light, because that's what I was trying to do. The funny thing is that I still doing that. I mean, a lot of artists change their interests, but I'm still painting rooms with light falling in them. I still love those painters I loved when I was young. I think I discovered Weyard when I was a teenager and still up Weyard.
Zoe Messinger:
In terms of your time at Brandeis, what is it that you think has changed the most about the institution?
Susan Lichtman:
One of the things that's been hardest I think for students is, it's now a thing at Brandeis every student double majors and then has three minors. They just don't have time to play. Back in the '80s and '90s, students would just be a studio major and then maybe just take courses and other things that were interesting to them.
Zoe Messinger:
Can you talk a little bit about your studio space and why you like it?
Susan Lichtman:
We built this big studio barn. My husband and I, each have studios and a small house. We built it before we had kids. We have two daughters. I thought, "Why don't we build a slightly bigger house? Slightly ..." Why do I like it? My studio is just steps away from my house. I can make ... I have a really big space. It's has a huge soaring ceiling and it's really large. As you can see this, as I get older more and more of the space is storage. Storage keeps getting bigger and bigger because I keep making paintings that just need to be put somewhere. I am steps away from this room that's become my motif for 30 years and I never get tired of it.
Susan Lichtman:
The downstairs of our house is just one big room with a tiny kitchen and I make it look bigger sometimes in my paintings. But I just seeing how life changes through the year, through the seasons and seeing how the inhabitants of that space changed from an empty room to having children that grew up doing insane things in that room, guests. I mean, came stage space for narratives. So having that space right there to constantly look at and then use as a source for the paintings has been amazing.
Zoe Messinger:
With your studio practice, could you just walk me through one of your typical days?
Susan Lichtman:
I am not a morning painter. A lot of people get up at dawn and paint. I really am an afternoon painter. I think my peak time is late afternoon, which is hot. I've said I'm an all things considered painter because I loved to paint. I listen to news and podcasts all day in my studio as a way to connect me to the outside world because I'm so much in this enclosed space here. But I really need to feel connected. I'm a political junkie. I listen to the news all day and really late afternoon, I really love what ... My peak hours are 4:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon.
Zoe Messinger:
Do you have any works in particular you'd like to talk about or walk us through?
Susan Lichtman:
This is a wall where I just hang little paintings and they might be old and they might be ones I'm working on. I'm constantly changing this wall. It's just like a wall of studies. Then these are paintings that I've all started this past year. I started painting these interiors. One of the things that we did last year was build this little greenhouse out of old windows. It's suddenly something to look at. In the garden, it's like a ... They call them follies. It's a focal point. I loved having that thing to look at. I started painting these ... This is my daughter and my husband and people coming and going. We even had a meal in the greenhouse.
Susan Lichtman:
This was exciting for me to have another interior to paint. I also started a painting, this big one, out my studio door. It was also about summer. I'm working from memory and the photos, especially for things that move. Light moves and figures move. Photos are really good for that. Photos are really bad for other things like color. I like an invented color in the paintings and I use a limited palette. I only paint things that I'm experiencing. I try to just to steal that experience and transform it into something other. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I think. I think for me, it becomes something more than the every day.
Zoe Messinger:
I feel your work kind of related to the feelings that were present during 2020, where all of us were in our own thoughts, even though we were surrounded by other people. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Susan Lichtman:
Yeah. It became really interesting to me early on to paint people in a domestic space where they're very close, but weren't connecting. When I was younger, I never wanted to paint a conversation, or people touching each other. It was about that intimate isolation we have in a house, where if one person's cooking and one's reading and once and they ... It is an unpleasant isolation, I mean. I think that there's a wonderful ... It's harmonious in a house, where people coexist and are given their room to be in their own world, even though physically they're bumping up against each other.
Susan Lichtman:
Suddenly, this year, I mean, that's almost become a cliche. The children in school next to the parents who are working and they're all there. That whole subject is blown open for most people. But yeah, I think that has been a beautiful thing about a house is how people can be physically close and yet into sharing their aloneness in a good way.
Zoe Messinger:
Do you have an ideal place for your viewer to experience your work?
Susan Lichtman:
Yes. A gallery with great light. I remember the gallery in Memphis where the work was, the lights were as a brand new setup. I saw the paintings in a totally different way. I had never seen them lit so evenly. Because my paintings deal with uneven light, like how light falls in a space. If the light is uneven in the room, it's a very confusing. I like that neutral, clean space. I have a gallery in New York, Steven Harvey, that's this little hole in the wall space. It's magical and I love the way paintings look in that space.
Zoe Messinger:
In terms of our prospective students who are interested in moving towards a gallery representation, was that something that you heard of and you applied to? Did you speak with the gallery? Do any research?
Susan Lichtman:
No, he found me but it's funny because I would go to that gallery. I knew other people who showed in it and I thought these are my people. There's a lot of different worlds within the art world. There's a lot of places that I don't fit in and I feel like an outsider. But I would go to his gallery and see the artists that he showed. He shows different abstract and figurative, dead and alive. But there's all something that brings them together. I thought, I would love to be in this eclectic group and so I feel really lucky.
Susan Lichtman:
One of the things I love that artists are doing now. When I was younger, it's like we would just hope that Art Gallery would pick us up. You could drop off slides, you can't do that anymore and hope to be considered. Now, for the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, artists have just been saying, "We're going to curate our own show. We're not going to wait around." There are all these artists run spaces and artists as curators. Such an empowering thing to be happening. Those shows are really interesting and they're showing in all kinds of spaces, pop up spaces.
Susan Lichtman:
There's so many different ways to show the work. I showed my work mainly University galleries for many years, until just a little hole in the wall gallery in Providence, Rhode Island. I live near Providence, where all the artists teaching at Brown and Rusty wood show and didn't have a huge audience, but it was a community. I got to show every other year there. That was really important for me. I think you need to get your work out of the studio, if you're an artist, but it doesn't have to be like to Chelsea.
Zoe Messinger:
If you had one piece of advice to give to prospective students or to people wanting to explore more professionally the fine arts world, what would you tell them?
Susan Lichtman:
Do what you love to really follow your love, to not worry so much. It will all be ... Oh, if you're doing what you love, it will be okay, to go slow. Things take time though. Don't be too much of a hurry or expect quick rewards from other people.
Zoe Messinger:
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I learned a lot and I can't wait to see your work in person one of these days.
Danielle Friedman:
Well, thank you so much, Susan, Alfredo and Joe. We wish we had more than 12 minutes for each of you. We're so lucky that we get to have a little bit of time now to speak with you live. Alison, Zoe, Susan, Joe, Alfredo, please unmute yourselves. For everyone tuned in, we're going to have a few questions for Susan, Alfredo and Joe, live and discussion. Any questions that come up in your mind throughout, just please put them in the chat box. You can also direct message them to me if you feel like you want to be anonymous in your question. After we have our discussion, we're going to get to the questions, your questions. Let's jump right in and Alison.
Alison Judd:
The first question is a little bit open. I will throw it out there for you guys to start with. Susan, maybe we'll start with you. What is color?
Susan Lichtman:
Color is a quality of light. Color in a painting for me. I'm a tonalist. I think of color as being an organization of tones with a real hierarchy. Just as tones are in music. That's how I think of color and painting and hue takes is maybe subservient to value for me. But hue can still have an important voice.
Alison Judd:
Alfredo?
Alfredo Gisholt:
Well, for me, I've always ... I don't know, I think I'm a natural colorist. I've always liked Matias's idea that color is a way to emotion, to feeling and I probably think about color that way when I'm choosing color, as a way to spark a certain sentiment or ... I don't know. Reminiscent of something. It's always attached to emotion. I don't know, I guess that would be my simple definition of how I approach it.
Alison Judd:
Joe?
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah. I guess I connected what Alfredo was saying. I think that probably when I was younger, in painting, and this is going to sound a little hippie, but I would say that a lot of ... I thought of color as a choice. Especially now that I'm working on larger projects, I think of color much more as an experience. I figure out how to experience color instead of choosing what color to use.
Danielle Friedman:
What about three words? If you could describe your work in three words, what are the three words? Alfredo.
Alfredo Gisholt:
I would have a hard time describing in three words. I mean, I think one of it would be ... If I think aspirationally about it, three words that I would like from my work to share with others is as I mentioned in the video, I would like it to feel like it's real somehow. That one could walk into this space and not be unfamiliar with it. I also like it to feel intimate. One of the things that I'd like about working in large paintings is that they can have the dual experience where you can look at him from a distance. But when you get up close, there's a life inside of it. I guess real intimate. I don't know. I believe in intuition at times where I see myself doing things that I didn't expect. I'd like to communicate that, that thing seems somewhat unprecedented that they came together in a way that ... I don't know. It's not predictable. I guess it would be real. What else did I say?
Danielle Friedman:
Intimate.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Intimate and unpredictable.
Danielle Friedman:
Unpredictable. Awesome. What about you, Joe?
Joe Wardwell:
I Think I'll just go with one. If you google me, all it says is American painter. I think that is. I mean, in some ways, if you think about my background, and where I'm from, and what I'm interested in, thinking about and dressing and trying to understand the experience of the country that we're in and that whole endeavor, I think. Just American painter. Two, I guess two.
Danielle Friedman:
If you add the word behind you, you could get three.
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah.
Danielle Friedman:
High American painters super up there.
Joe Wardwell:
Danielle Friedman:
Susan, what about you?
Susan Lichtman:
At first, I thought the three words would be figures in space, but I think more particularly, it should be shards of light. Those are the three words.
Danielle Friedman:
Wow. Thank you so much.
Zoe Messinger:
Susan, I know that we discussed this question a little bit in the video. But because of quarantine and all recent political action in the US, have you guys noticed a shift in terms of your subject matter or your work? Susan, why don't you go first?
Susan Lichtman:
Well, yeah. As I said, suddenly, everyone's talking about home and there's a section of the New York Times on home and an exploring the ideas of interiorness. But you know what made ... I thought of if I could bring this up. Back in, I think it was September 15, 2001, the Rose Art Museum was celebrating its 40th anniversary. It was the weekend right after 9/11. There was a show called, Then and Now, where artists who had paintings in the collections from the early '60s were invited back and showed a recent work. There was a panel and everyone said, "How is your work changing because of 9/11." The artists said ... They all said, "Don't ask us this. It's too soon. It takes a while for an artist to absorb a change." I was thinking of that recently, because I don't know if 9/11 did change any artists, I don't know. Alfredo, maybe you can talk to that. But, yeah. Maybe this time will change people and change my work, but I'm not sure yet.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Well, Zoe for me, I guess one of the things it's not just this past year. I mean, I think the political undertones of the last five years have been ... I'm still very attached to my place of origin, Mexico. The discussion around being Mexican in this country has not been the most pleasant over the last five years. I guess my relationship to Mexico has always been very present in the studio. I'd never been overtly political in terms of addressing that relationship in terms of ... I've always felt that the experience somehow of growing up, of being there and still having a presence there, frequent presence there, somehow it would inform what I do. But it's sort of ... I don't know.
Alfredo Gisholt:
It's accentuated the presence of my ... The people that I share the place of birth. But I do agree with Susan. It's a little bit too soon. It's almost like we're going through it. It's made me a little bit more reflective as to what people's realities are and certain kind of... I don't know. Not only that, I mean, the Black Lives Matter and all this thing that happens simultaneously. There's a social awareness that I haven't really put on paper or made drawings of or about, but somehow it does seem to be, like what Susan was saying, is one way to feel connected in the studios to be listening to what's happening outside of the studio. I don't know what kind of impact they'll have. I don't know. It'll be ... I don't know. It's been a strange time, for sure.
Zoe Messinger:
Thank you. Now Joe, how about yourself?
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah. Now, I remember that lecture that Susan was mentioning about the artist talking about the distillation process, that I think that in some ways it's really important to allow art to absorb and then perhaps reflect back. I think those are maybe the clearest of mirrors that we can hold up. That said though, I think that because I have text in my work, I can make work that's so immediately responsive. There's a lot of times during this year where I made things text paintings. One of them said, one of these days, these days will end. It was a line from song from the '90s, but it had a particular resonance to what Susan was talking about with quarantining and being around all the time with kids right next to you.
Joe Wardwell:
I do have the benefit of immediately responding. I think on a deeper level, though with what Alfredo was talking about, with the political situation in our country. It's really this past year has made me question a lot of my relationship not to just what happens in the studio, but the institutions that we engage in art. I'm very fortunate to be working on a public work project that is directly engaged with my community. In the future, I would have thought prior to this year, I would say that this project was the anomaly with inside the structures that I'm working in and I think that I'm really reevaluating my own role to institutions where art gets displayed and celebrated and I'm hoping to be able to engage in more community based projects in the future.
Zoe Messinger:
Thank you
Alison Judd:
Great. The next question we have for you guys is more on kind of, who do you guys lean on? We know that students lean on professors for advice and ideas and support and we're curious who professors lean on. Joe, why don't you start us off with that one?
Joe Wardwell:
Two things that I deserve direct support but it's also ... I mentioned it. In direct support, I would just say family. I think that having a place to shut off art and just be a dad or husband is super important and really nice to completely disengaged with the ongoing effects of trying to be an ambitious artist over a long term period. But also, I would say that it's really important to have a community of artists around you. I've been very fortunate that the artists that I was engaged with working when I came out of graduate school are still some of my closest friends today that I see on a semi-regular basis.
Joe Wardwell:
Then also the longer working together with Susan and Alfredo and my colleagues, really does have a powerful, powerful impact on one's ability to ... It's not like we get together as a team and plan stuff all the time, but just being working with such a high caliber. I mean, I do think that we're very lucky in the caliber of artists that we have in the art department and just being able to be around them for support. It's not like I turned to Alfredo and say, "What color should I mix. I'm really down or whatever." But just knowing that they are there doing the same things that you're doing. Alfredo and I went to graduate school together and that they're still plugging away and they're still pushing at the same things you're pushing at is really important.
Alison Judd:
Susan, you want to go next?
Susan Lichtman:
Yeah. Definitely old friends and family very important. My kids are now in their 20s. They are such a great source of support and ideas. And yes I'm so glad Joe mentioned colleagues. I love my colleagues. I mean they ... If I get frantic or anything, we have three way phone conversations or I grab Alfredo in the hall and say what do you think? I just feel so lucky. Also, I see Robin Miller on this. She is a dear, as I say, sister from another mother who's in ... She's a great Russian literature scholar and she's been a dear friend to me at Brandeis.
Alison Judd:
Alfredo?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I mean, I think I couldn't agree more with what Joe and Susan are saying. I mean it's like, we as teachers represent something, we as colleagues also represent something for each other. That's all. I think, indirectly like what Joe was saying, they may not be direct questions or studio visits, but it is really nice to see, to go to a place of work where you feel like people were doing the thing that you were doing the same thing the day before. That kind of engagement. I also lean on a lot of artists. Whether they're dead or alive, or from hundreds of years ago, or just an exhibition that I see in New York. Those kinds of relationships. To be able to be inspired, challenged by. I think artists ... I have some friends that do that sometimes intimately in the studio. But the work of other artists is really truly like a support system and an inspiration and really aspirational at the same time.
Danielle Friedman:
This question is really a bit ... Just going to ask it. In your teaching career, can you share a story about a student who wildly impacted your personal development?
Alfredo Gisholt:
I could. Because it's not one student. I think it ... The one thing that still continues to impact me. I get the opportunity to be in the studio when people are doing a lot of things for the first time. Whether it be a big drawing, or they're pushing through ideas and thinking about and seeing things. There's a kind of excitement. There's a surprise to it. There's like, I can't believe I did that kind of feeling coming from what happens in the studio, that every time I leave, I open my studio door and I want to do the same thing. The fact that after all these years, I want to keep surprising myself.
Alfredo Gisholt:
I want to keep seeing things for the first time and be excited about it. In that sense, it's the commitment that students showed to trust me as a faculty member to allow that to happen, it's a really almost like an everyday gift. Where I get to come back at the end of the day and I'm going to say, "Okay, I was able to facilitate that for someone. I want to do that myself." That's widely impacting.
Danielle Friedman:
Every day a small gift of spontaneity. You get to open a small gift and you go to your studio and you tap into your ability to be playful and spontaneous and surprise yourself.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Exactly. See things for the first time. That's a real gift.
Danielle Friedman:
Awesome. What about you, Susan?
Susan Lichtman:
Yeah. I want a second that. Did you come up with that question, Danielle? Because that question I think would only come from a teacher who knows ... I don't think students realize how reciprocal the process is. They think we would just give assignments and then step back and grade. But yes, you talked about it being a gift. I mean, I spend more time with students than I do with my artist friends, basically, week in week out. And them, they're the community and I try things out on them. I mean, if I'm craving or thinking about doing something in my studio, I let the students do it first. Like, "I feel like painting heads". I'll let them do it. See how it goes. I don't think they realize me doing that. But that makes the teaching exciting for me because it's like a little laboratory and they're always surprised. The way they share their insights and with their people in the class and with me is just it's constantly inspiring.
Danielle Friedman:
Thank you, Susan. Joe?
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah. I mean, I think that ... I echo both what Susan and Alfredo are saying. We've both been teaching so long. I mean, I could just go through lists of students like yourself, Danielle, when you were my TA. You work with people ... Nomi I think is on the call. Alison, for going to the first time to Brandeis in Sienna. There's these little points in your life where the cool thing about teaching is that, especially teaching in art, you're really in the present in that moment with this student. A lot of times, you get really wildly affected by a student right there in the moment and it's a continuous experience that goes on and on.
Joe Wardwell:
In fact, yesterday, I have a freshman in my drawing of the influence class who came at 11:00 in the morning and stayed till like 6:30, 7:00 at night working off all day until I left. I think that those experiences they're happening all the time. It's hard to really ... There are people, like yourself, in such that it make huge impacts but there's constantly people who are making ... who are helping you feel connected to what you're doing.
Danielle Friedman:
Awesome. Thank you. I think we're going to take ... We only have nine minutes. We're going to take a few questions from the audience. One person asked, and I think this is really specific to Susan's, since you're the artist here who has a studio in your home. What advice you have for creating a home studio?
Susan Lichtman:
For me, it was ... I don't like getting interrupted. I think there has to be a sense that you can enter the zone without that knock on the door. That to me is the most important and that to me. It's like you have to be able to get into your own headspace. I don't know whether it's a sign on the door or a lock on the door. I think light is really important. I think you need to be able to make a mess and spill things. You should cover up floors and I guess that's it. Those are the three most important things.
Danielle Friedman:
Amazing. Alison, I think you have one from the audience. Can you ask that one?
Alison Judd:
Yeah. Have any of you had to overcome resistance to making? And if so, how did you return to making?
Joe Wardwell:
I guess I don't know what ... I mean, I can jump in there for that first one. But I don't know what exactly resistance is. But, I mean, I think my studio practices always been kind of you come and you work. I've always treated like a nine, five jobs that I wasn't paid for all the time. It's always just been a habit. I had to quit. I've had to have longer gaps. I think that my teaching abroad, I can't do my work in the same way and it takes a while. I think it's like a sport. It's like restarting a rusty motor when you started lawnmower sometimes. You got to get back into shape to get back up to it and to know that it takes a little while. The first things that you do in the studio after a break are oftentimes you get really excited and then like, two weeks later, you're like, "That's terrible." Then you just got to realize that it's a process. It's a muscle that needs to get used over and over again. That once you get back into shape, it'll be better.
Alfredo Gisholt:
I don't know that I have felt resistance in the same in the way that I understand, something that prevents you from being able to be in the studio or do what you wish what you could do. I don't know ... I don't think I have experienced that. I've been very fortunate to ... Like what Joe was saying, there's ebbs and flows in terms of the activity. I think discipline has also been something that I tried to keep very much an ongoing thing. But no, I don't I know that I felt resistance in the way that I'm assuming the question implies.
Susan Lichtman:
I just want to say one thing about Alfredo and Joe are very involved parents and especially this year, Joe, Oh my gosh. Kids at home. Alison, you got a full house. I just think when I was in school that was like don't have a family. No. Your greatest love has to be your art and that is just ridiculous. I really think that that tension of having to spend time with family and then finding that private time in the studio is really important and it's great. It's a sense of ... You get a sense of energy where I think when you haven't been in the studio, you haven't been able to be thinking about your work, it's really kind of a freshness to come into your studio. I think that a new generation has to rethink the relationship between work and family. It's not either or, and they actually can help each other. I don't know. Do you agree, Alison?
Alison Judd:
100%, Susan. Thank you so much for that.
Danielle Friedman:
We can have three panel discussions just on that topic. It would be the wisdom of your generation, like it would be so impactful. Because it's a conversation that has to be developed and had, especially as women as always. Yes.
Susan Lichtman:
Its funny because people ... Sometimes students would like not talk to me for 10 years and then they get in touch and they're, "I don't know, if you remember me. I was your student. I'm pregnant, can I still paint?" I just love that.
Danielle Friedman:
That's so much about you as a teacher. Go ahead. Zoe, jump in.
Alison Judd:
You're muted, Zoe.
Zoe Messinger:
I am muted. In terms of something that a lot of brand Asians talk about is how can we give back to the community where we graduated from? Is there anything you would like to see on campus? Or is there any way that alumni can give back to the arts department?
Susan Lichtman:
I will just jump in because there's an uncomfortable silence. This has been great. My students have watched the videos, the previous ones. They need to know that there is a life for them out, past Brandeis being an artist. Being role models, being out there, being creative people, I think you need to continue this conversation with our students now. Because they do wonder... I know Hyatt isn't doing it for them, but you guys can do it for them.
Joe Wardwell:
Yeah and I think I'm just jump in following on what Susan was saying. I'm now the faculty liaison to the Brandeis Arts Council. I see a few members on there and events like this. The great work that you guys are doing. Then where we want to kind of shift the focus of the Brandeis Arts Council. I really think that it's a little bit in that first interview we're talking about coming to Brandeis is ... There's definitely a vibe with the arts at Brandeis and it's a big ... It's a hidden gem. The arts at Brandeis and it's this funny story that we're trying to constantly get out there.
Joe Wardwell:
We're trying to emphasize how great the arts education is there and what it means to study there and to work there. I really liked it when you have this story that still needs to be told. Still needs to get out there. I think that any way to get involved with the way that Susan says, as role models, as members of the community, or the affinity group, or the Arts Council, I think it's ... Even in this very difficult year, I'm very, very hopeful for the next phase of Arts at Brandeis. I think it's still ... I think it's going to ... I'm very positive to where we're going.
Alfredo Gisholt:
Yeah. I agree with Susan, what you're saying. I've watched the other two virtual salons. I don't know that it would have happened without the circumstances that prompted the new way of engagement. I think there are probably keep exploring possibilities of new ways of engaging like this. There could be some kind of ... I don't know, maybe things that we haven't thought about. But it is important. I think it's important, like Susan said, to feel like there is a community out there that shares the same values and interests and history.
Alfredo Gisholt:
For all of us, Brandeis is a place like what you said and what we were talking about in the interview, Alison. No matter how long you have been at Brandeis, it marks you for the rest of your life in many ways. It gives you a very clear sense of belonging. I think it's important for students to feel that that is out there. This is one great way that just happened to ... I don't know. Be created out of necessity, last year. I don't know. We can think about new ways of doing it too.
Zoe Messinger:
I'm also for anyone who is a student and is interested in possibly finding more opportunities in the arts. I'm going to post on the channel a link to B Connect, which is our newest way to network and mentor different students and alumni from Brandeis.
Alison Judd:
Yeah, well, thank you guys so much. I mean, I think this conversation, especially where we were going towards the end, is so important. I think a few people mentioned that there isn't much support conversation about how to move forward artistically after school and I think there has been some conversation starting on that. I really appreciate you guys giving us more of that. I think it is a conversation that we could continue having for a long time. I just want to make sure that we thank everyone for coming. Thank you all on behalf of the Alumni Network.
Alison Judd:
There's a link in the chat for both the B Connect and also for the Facebook group, where you can sign up so that you make sure about events that we do in the future. There is all sorts of events happening from visual arts, to theater programs, to music programs all across the Alumni Arts Network. Thank you again, Alfredo and Joe and Susan, for all your time for the interviews in this panel. To Danielle and Zoe, thank you. For editing the video, Danielle, you always do a great job. Please, if anyone has other questions or wants to get in touch after, you can either reach out to myself, Zoe, Danielle. Anyone at the Brandeis office as well. Everyone have a great day. Thank you so much.