So happy to share my friend Kevin Frances' latest series with you. We met at RISD two years ago and since then he's been in a slew of shows, most recently at Kala Institute in CA and IPCNY. He's an extremely talented and thoughtful printmaker/ installation artist that you should definitely know about. Go see his work in person and hear him speak tomorrow at IPCNY: tomorrow 7-9pm as part of print week NYC. Can't wait to see what's next.
images/ Yifan Frances, Kevin Frances
Describe a typical studio day for you:
While I'm conceiving a project, my studio practice is very erratic, writing notes, making coffee every half hour, twiddling my thumbs; it's a very stressful time, very inefficient. However, once I settle into an idea, I become very focused and regimented; right now I'm printing, so every day I'll come in and print one layer. Mix the inks, dampen the paper, dampen the block, test prints, prints on good paper (14 in the edition now), wash brushes, hang up rags to dry. It's very physical, it takes about five or six hours, but I'm totally wiped afterwards.
What are three words to describe your artistic practice best?
Physical, exacting, fundamental. Now, that's how I feel about the making of the work, not really what I want to get out of it. I hope that in a way my toiling disappears, the work the feels natural and easy.
Artists you look to for inspiration?
A few artists I always come back to are Milton Avery and Wayne Thiebaud. On a second tier, I would say Robert Gober, David Hockney, and Giorgio Morandi.
You have an upcoming show and artist talk at IPCNY featuring several
woodblock prints. How did you get into woodblock printing and how
would you describe your most recent series?
I started making woodblock prints when I was in undergrad. At the time I was making these cast concrete sculptures, big honking minimalist ripoffs. I made these prints that were just the silhouettes of objects, something about the solidity and texture of the printed shape seemed to sum up everything I loved about the cast concrete, and added color!
In my current project, New Apartment, New City, I constructed a scale model of the interior of an apartment, and created a fictional character to inhabit it. This was my first foray into full on story telling, so I worked very intuitively; a narrative evolved as I built the objects in the space. The character buys furniture at IKEA, starts a job, has a dinner party. The story became an open-ended question about how we shape our adult persona, what it means to be ordinary, how we form our assumptions about other people, as well as our perception of reality and fiction.
You have a definite knack for story telling... Where did that stem
from and how does it fuel your practice?
I've always loved reading, and I would say the specific works of art that have moved me the most have been books. Growing up I wanted to be a writer... but I hate writing. It's the worst, I couldn't spend my life doing that! I know some famous writers have said they hate writing... whatever. I've never bought that line, "I'm an artist because I couldn't do anything else."
Anyway, I guess I'm trying to channel my inner writer through my own visual vocabulary.
Tell us about Find & Form space and how that evolved:
Find & Form Space is a pop-up gallery that I organize in Boston. We hold exhibitions once a month on first Fridays. It started out on a lark; the owners of this space like art and wanted to use their space to do something on first Fridays, and I thought, "Hey I know a lot of artists, how hard could it be to throw some shows together?" Well it turns out it's a little more work than that... but I've found it really rewarding to be able to promote artists whom I admire. We've had two group shows so far, and in the future we'll have some performance/installation projects, solo shows, and hopefully other things like lectures, panel discussions, maybe a pop-up library.
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