Minding the Curve with Mattie Hinkley

by Shannon Jay

Mattie Hinkley’s exaggerated and clothes-free style evolved throughout the years for a lot of reasons. It happened between shifts between schools or mediums and loneliness in cross-country celibacy or shifting power dynamics when she got back in the bedroom. Somewhere along the way, she stopped using reference materials for her characters and separating sex from any other bodily movement. Side-by-side skateboarders and surfers are featured with sixty-niners and suckers. She’ll be showing some work at her own table next week at NOICE, Norfolk’s Original Indie Comic Expo.

 

Seems like you’ve lived a lot of places on both coasts, how has each environment shaped your aesthetic?

I grew up in Virginia but went to furniture school in northern California, so I lived there for three years, and I’ve just returned to Virginia. Going to California was great, in a way, because I lived in a small rural town with no friends, so I just spent all my free time in my room drawing, and really figured out how I like to draw, what felt good. I had the opportunity to be very introspective. I was lonely and sad and experienced long periods of celibacy, but my art is better now.

Why is sex such a strong subject in your work and (especially considering the androgyny and queerness within many figures) what are you trying to say with this focus?

I don’t want to fabricate a false narrative here so I’ll be honest and say that, really, I’m just interested in drawing bodies and sex is something I think about so often that it makes its way into what my drawn bodies are doing. I also draw bodies skateboarding and walking around, but people don’t seem to care as much about that. So, if anything, I’m trying to say that sex doesn’t have to be any more important (or funny or dramatic or sinister) than anything else. Maybe sex is my still life, my bowl of fruit. As far as the form of the bodies, regarding their presentation as androgynous and queer, I suppose that’s directly reflective of how my own body feels — it’s the type of body I know best — and it feels uncomfortable (and boring) to draw them any other way.

How has drawing sexy pictures for 3+ years changed your relationship with the act itself (either internally or through people’s reactions & responses to your work)?

I don’t know that it has. Well, actually, at some point, after repeated uncomfortable (read: gross) responses from straight men about my work, I stopped drawing men in dominant positions, and that idea seeped into my personal sex life as well. So maybe it deepened my feminist resolve in the bedroom.

What came first, woodworking or illustration?

Illustration, for sure. I’ve been drawing since I was little; I went to SCAD at 18 intending to major in illustration (I quickly dropped out but that’s another story). Woodworking only came into my life 3 or 4 years ago.

How does each medium inform each other? What do you get out of each creatively?

Initially they were wholly unrelated, except maybe that I had confidence in accurately sketching furniture designs. I learned the fundamentals of woodworking and furniture making first so I was making traditional cabinets, tables, chairs. But as I’ve grown as a woodworker, I feel more confident in creating my own forms and shapes, so certainly my illustration style is more and more evident in my wood pieces. For me, woodworking is a technical practice, a stressful but rewarding learning experience, whereas illustration is calming, a release, an expression. Though that switches.

Both mediums are an exercise in shapes and curves. What’s your relationship to simple shapes and slick curves?

The way I draw and design is more intuitive than intentional, for sure. I wish all the time that I created differently, that my lines were wobblier, that my shapes were wonkier, and I work toward that, but when I sit down to draw or design, what naturally comes out is usually simple and clean. What can you do.

Your art from a few years ago was more realistic and defined, how did you get to more exaggerated and ambiguous characters?

I stopped using reference material. I was doodling in a sketchbook on a plane, this was winter of 2016, and I started drawing figures without trying to make them accurate, messing with their proportions, and it immediately felt so much better, more freeing, more honestly expressive. Maybe that’s corny to say. I don’t know. But I had never realized how constricted I felt by drawing realistically until I stopped, then I never wanted to start again.

What were the subjects of some of your earliest pieces? In my “research” (creeping) I stumbled upon what I’m assuming is your MySpace full of fantastical animals – I’d love to explore that connection to your current human focus.

Oh gosh, I’m a bit embarrassed. Yeah, those are mine; I used to draw animals all the time, and would give them human traits or body parts, a human head with a pig body or something. Maybe it was a young vegan’s crusade to get people to see the connection between us, and I just exhausted that proselytizing part of myself.

how is your work different in the context of comics and zines?

I’ve started a hundred comics but never finished them. I would make a few panels then get stressed and stop. I’m not confident in my storytelling. I feel comfortable with one-liners or quick back-and-forths, but not long narratives. On top of that, I like the ambiguity of my characters: their thoughts and actions left vague for the viewer to interpret. So the comic I’ve been working on for this expo doesn’t really have dialogue (or at least, doesn’t have text bubbles). But I’ll also have a woodworking how-to zine there which is chock-full of text.

What’s your “day job” if not woodworking/arting full-time & how do you find work/life balance?

Thankfully I do sell art and woodwork regularly, but I also work at a coffee shop and as a dogsitter, and I’ve been lucky enough to receive a lot of scholarships and grants while in school. It’s so hard to find balance, and I don’t know that I do. I stay up late and wake up early. I drink a lot of coffee. I eat microwaveable meals. I neglect self-care and over-commit to art projects then bemoan them when the deadline approaches. I wish I were more productive but life is exhausting.

You’re finishing up a degree, although you’ve been to other schools will this be your first Bachelor’s? What do you plan to do after school? (Every student’s most dreaded question)

Yeah, so, I’m at VCU in the Craft + Material Studies department, and hopefully will finish in May 2020 with a BFA. Then I’ll apply to every residency and fellowship I can get my hands on (/afford). Then after a couple years, my plan is to seek out graduate programs for Furniture Design and try to earn a Master’s degree so that I can teach. Or if I can swing a permanent teaching position with only a Bachelor’s, do that. So wood teacher by day, illustrator by night, human being on the weekends.

 

check out mattie’s prints, zines & comics this Saturday, Feb 2nd, at NOICE, norfolk’s original indie comic expo

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Miles From The Mainstream: A Chat With Gretchen Peters

“I’m sorry I’m eating dinner while I’m talking to you,” Gretchen Peters said after a not-so-long lull in the conversation, “I don’t normally do that when I’m giving an interview, but I’ve just taken a few bites.” The Grammy-nominated songwriter had just gotten off a plane from Ohio, taking a pit stop from touring at her home in Nashville.

Peters moved there 30 years ago to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter. “I basically patterned myself after all the people I’ve idolized and copied while I was young [like Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell]. I came here with that in mind – that’s what I wanted to do.” Her initial publishing deal was merely an effort to “prove that I could write songs, then and if I got a record deal, I could insist on singing my own songs.”

Lyrics and melodies made for Faith Hill, Etta James, Neil Diamond, and “personal hero” Bonnie Raitt landed Peters in the Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame in 2014. No matter how bright the star, though, she’s always flattered when “anyone wants to” sing a song she wrote. “If it’s really popular with fans, they have to be on board to sing it for the rest of their careers, and you have to really feel like you can be invested in a song to do that.”

Peters knows that feeling well, battling with her own big hit, “Independence Day.” Peters’ version for Martina McBride is “almost monolithic, you can’t really do anything with it except go through the motions.” Now live, she switched from guitar to piano to provide a “fresh” ballad and show her original version to the world. “When you hear a song a lot you stop really listening to the words. My way of dealing with that was to slow it way down…so that people would focus on the lyrics all over again.”

Words are Peters’ livelihood after all, but they start as a scene. “You have to have to be able to see the movie so to speak before you can really write the song,” she said, “I spin them out based on ideas I catch in the course of everyday living.” For “Boy from Rye,” what she considers the defining track on her new record Dancing With The Beast, the springboard was the title itself.

Despite it’s name, the song is about the “fragile, fraught time for girls” hitting puberty, and was “a song that only a female writer could’ve written.” From Peters’ biggest hits to songs for herself, this is a common theme, as women of all ages “are the characters I’m really drawn to and interested in.” She quickly corrected my common misconception, however, that while only a woman can write Peters’ songs, everyone can appreciate them.

“It’s a voice coming at you saying ‘I feel this way too.’ I don’t find that depressing at all, I find it hopeful and reassuring and beautiful.”

Gretchen on why sad songs rule

“Maybe they didn’t necessarily know or could have written it, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them,” she said of men who comment on “Boy From Rye” after her performances. “One of the great things songs can do is kind of let you live in somebody else’s skin for 5 minutes; at the heart of it, what songs really do is open up our empathy channels.”

A lack of empathy in the “wasteland” of current mainstream country accelerated the focus on Peters’ singing career. “When I turn on the radio – which is rarely – but when I do it just seems like it’s just pure testosterone. Honestly, one thing I think we all have to remember is people programming commercial stations are not selling music, they’re not selling songs; they’re selling tires, deodorant, whatever they’re running ads for.”

All the good songwriters are hiding in female-saturated, counter-culture Americana, Peters claimed. “I started to feel like there was no room for the types of songs I wrote. I could hear it, it doesn’t take a genius to listen to the radio and figure out things are going east and you’re going west.” Welcoming these songs would make the radio “more diverse, more varied, just by the nature of [women’s] own experiences.”

However, she said “we’re the victim of our own technology,” with shortened attention spans proven in test audiences and focus groups that record labels rely on more than ever to churn out singles. “People may respond to an up-tempo, happy happy song about beers and trucks in the first 15 seconds, but a 5-min story song, you got to hear it all the way through before you even know how it affects us.”

While she’s grateful for her “accidental” success, she’s not a slave to it. “I always have really written what I feel like I need to say. I never really consciously wrote songs for other people.” Peters’ seems okay with stepping out of the songwriting spotlight and into her own, finally singing her sad songs for herself and anyone who can relate.

“From the time I started loving and playing music, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, the most cathartic experience was lying on my floor in the dark listening to a really sad song and feeling it deeply,” she said passionately, “you’re listening to someone across a great distance singing something to you, letting you know you’re not alone… it’s a voice coming at you saying ‘I feel this way too.’ I don’t find that depressing at all, I find it hopeful and reassuring and beautiful. Even crying when hearing a sad song and feeling better, that’s kind of what I hope to create whenever I’m playing live, that moment people can feel like they’re with other people and sharing that emotional experience. To me, that’s as good as it gets.”

Shedding Water & Poise with Heidi Peele

by Shannon Jay

Heidi Peelen’s work sheds the polite skin females usually portray, and unleashes every lady’s raunchy side. Whether large-scale mixed media pieces, goofy installations, or comedy routines, she creates characters (sometimes at her own expense) that might not be classy but are complex. What some may perceive as lower class at best or trailer trash at worst, she turns into stunning pieces that provoke beauty and respect. She’s nobly brought what she learned in the Big Apple at Pratt Institute back to humble beginnings in Hampton Roads.

She’s put herself out there for performances at Push Comedy and Watershed Art House, which she created and runs. Next, she’s shaking-shit-up at Chrysler Glass Studio this week for a Third Thursday performance. When I asked her to tell me a bit more about it via email, the question boded the shortest and vaguest response of all: “Me trying to be the perfect homemaker and me being the perfect homemaker.”

As for everything else, she’s pretty much an open book:

So, you do… a lot. Maybe start by listing out your extracurriculars?

As far as “extracurriculars,” I’m not sure if I can define them as such, I am genuinely bored by a lot of things and as result aim to find pleasure in other stuff. I really like other stuff. Most of the time the other stuff is anything and everything but the thing I SHOULD be concentrating on. If its a Sunday and I am alone, I like to play the autoharp and make up songs (only if my breakfast voice is still on) and sometimes I record them and sometimes I honestly just strum two chords over and over again until I never want to look at the autoharp for like a month. Also, I really am recently finding pleasure in housecleaning, redecorating and not leaving the parameters of my yard, unless its like someone’s birthday and even still I’ve flaked on like 3 this past year alone. Also I find sanctitude in making lists and never returning to them again. I have 8 to 10 spiral notebooks in rotation that I cant keep track of. 

What got you into comedy?  

I’ve made home movies dressed as really unfortunate characters since I was in ninth grade. When I found a place where other people were doing that and on stage, and then strangers were laughing and actually enjoyed it? And when I felt the adrenaline surge of hearing strangers laugh at me and I did it on purpose, I don’t know – that kind of turned me on, so I went for it.

Its fun, but I can’t fully submerge into anything. So I do it and try to incorporate it into my art and my day to day as naturally as I can, it makes sense. Especially for art, because art is a joke and I’ve been doing that since they told me you got to pick something to be good at and/or make money. I don’t make a lot of money. 

Money must come from somewhere. What’s your current “day job”?

Still teaching. I’m part-time waitressing too. I’ve worked in factory-produced metal stamping for the family business, I’ve worked as an assistant project manager in a basement in Brooklyn, I’ve been a Xerox printer salesman, I’ve made money doing what I had to do to make money.

I think there’s a beauty in employing yourself into fields that make you uncomfortable, because undoubtedly I learn something with every single job. Whatever we’re defining as a job these days. 

Tell me a bit about your sexy one-woman show.

One woman shows are a blast. I like to play with the role of performer for the audience and audience as the performers for the artist. Psychology is a favorite pass time read. But I am by no means experienced in the subject, especially anything written past 1970-something. I love any 60-70’s psychology. Its so much less forgiving than the contemporary, I think.

Anyhoo, the one woman shows are a way for me to low-key hate myself. Because just before I have to go out and perform, backstage, I freak all of the way out and want to call it immediately. Questions begged, “Why are they here?” and “OMG what do I contribute to society?” its all sort of just a cheeky guarantee that I get to develop my own existential crisis for actually no reason at all. The whole show, the whole production, is like one giant excuse for me to self destruct. Awesome. 

“Low-Key Starved” was all purely experimental (and I definitely want to do one again). It was really about toying with audience as performers vs the performer as the audience and how to make myself even uncomfortable. Like I had expectations of people reacting certain ways or walking out or getting fed up or laughing but then when they did I was like oh no what am I doing.

“This is How You Art” was more about the philosophy of watershed. I wanted to get the general art enthusiast up to speed with the tongue in cheek world of art academia and the contemporary and more conceptual pieces that have blurred the lines of art for even the experts. So I’d introduce a performance artist or sound piece or whatever through a live re-enactment (of course with some art licensing) and then allow the audience to experience it. After the re-enactment I would commentate on what they witnessed, and prompt them based off of Goethe’s 3 questions: what was the artist trying to do? Was it worth doing? And was she successful at doing it?

Speaking of Watershed Art House, What was the initial premise behind it and are there any upcoming events?

Watershed Art House is an attempt to yank the area out of the gallery and into the mindset of art as experience. Not a product, not an end result, no a sale, or potential sale or how much for this or whatever, but Watershed is supposed to stretch the mind. Omg that sounds zealous, BUT, I want it (and the people involved with me on this want it) to make art approachable and shifting and ever-changing and incredibly ephemeral. We live in a world of– never mind I’m not even going down the roads, but its a work in progress and we want art to be the experience and temporary and approachable by everyone. Amen. (and I think our next event is this fall- tba, tbd, y’all.)

What are all the visual mediums you work in? What’s your favorite?

I’ve been drawing since the magna-doodle and my mom made a really big deal over my drawing a deer – it looked like an animal of sorts I guess but whatever I was four and she thought it was the bee-knees and I think when your so easily influenced and you’re a little bb child and your mom makes you feel like Picasso, your 4 year old mind is like, “shit yea, I’m gonna be Picasso”. But recently (although I do draw alone and when I’m on the phone, or idk, whenever) I don’t see a point for visual art. I don’t see a lot of a point for anything, but especially visual art whose end product takes up space and time and money. I’ve spent a lot of those things in my life-long affair with this bit and I won’t stop, but the ebb and flow of our love demands that occasionally, I cut her off. Right now I like video and projections, and happenings and performances, and making myself really uncomfortable swimming in all those pools. And its working. Art should make you (as the artist) uncomfortable – if I feel good and cozy and comfy with doing the same thing I’ve been doing for a bajillion years, then really, what am I doing? 

What music/movies do you usually paint to or draw inspiration from?

I like anything with low to no dialogue. I like music with words I can’t understand but chords and repetition I do. I love repetitive qualities in sound. I love sound collage. One of the MAJOR films that truly dug out my insides and in ways revamped my brain was Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. Still now. And if I weren’t a trite millennial I’d give you my musical artist faves, except that then everyone reading this would know about them and then they might get a little more popular and then they’d do something awful with their next album and I’m approaching 30 and really need some stability in my life rn. 

To see more work, check out her portfolio, and her 360 portrait project on Instagram

Monthly Mix: Ella Hu$$le

EVERY MONTH, WE’LL BE FEATURING A MIX OF SONGS FROM DJS, WHIPPED UP ESPECIALLY FOR POPSCURE

Her name is Dionna Edmondson, but you can call her Ella. Clubgoers in NYC know her as Ella Hu$$le, where she serves looks and spins jams any given weekend intertwining classic hip-hop hits seamlessly. If you can’t make it to the big apple for her set, catch her show “Hu$$le in the House” every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month on waxx.fm.

For this mix, she toughened up her love for R&B with rap tracks, creating a perfect blend of hard and soft. Throw this collection of remixes on at your next party for guaranteed grooves. 

Tracklist

Walk It Like I Like (Talk It Edit) – Radical One
Oops – Mitchell Yard x Pasquinel
New Freezer (Dembow Remix) – Rich da Kid
Paper Planes (Remix) – Uki
Dude (Remix) – Beanie Man
Murder She Wrote – Chaka Demus
Bizzey (Kazkid remix) – Traag
Taste Riddim – Jamesy
Only You (Edit) – Ashanti
Ton – NA Horeyezon
Ride or Die – Joslyvio (Masquraid x Ravish edit)
Phone Down – Eryka Badu (Kingdom Edit) 
Frontin (Edit) – Pasquinel
Shake (Remix) – Rilla Force
Interlude (Remix) – SDP
WYWD (Remix) – Girl Unit ft Kelela
Fin de Demand – Radical One

Maker Extraordinaire Kelsie McNair’s Next Excursion

What once hung off the nails

by Shannon Jay

When I met Kelsie McNair up at her studio on Fawn Street, it looked like a gentle tornado had blown through. Walls were scattered with vacant nail holes, beautiful stained glass instead stacked on the ground. Old photos flung array, including a wallet-sized portrait of her mother sporting a jeweled choker and sassy red boa. Her table was afflux of boxes and those signature floral phone cases.

After closing her successful vintage shop, With Lavender and Lace, the cases became Kelsie’s main focus. Now, she’s finished up the last of her final batch. “I have to be out of here by Friday,” she said while carefully layering the gel over dried flowers in intricate rows. It was the first of a major to-do list that includes packing, photoshoots, and a show at Toast tomorrow with her project, Pyrrhic Whim. “Social time is over, that’s it,” she said “I’m done with that,” thus the show will serve as her farewell party before she moves to New York. There was no wine opener, so we relocated to her kitsch apartment filled with mismatch rugs and modern furniture that had a very high tech one.

“I’m doing so much sniffing” Kelsie said while putting away a mountain of laundry, deciphering what was clean or dirty. Seemingly no matching socks to her name, she exclaimed “my life is a nightmare.”

Where Kelsie’s head is at

We try to figure out which meme Kelsie is at the present moment; I suggest she’s the woman with math swirling around her heard, just trying to figure it out. Kelsie suggests it’s the comic of a dog uttering “this is fine” while sitting in a burning house. “That’s where I’m at,” she said “it’s a good fire I guess, just a lot of change really quickly, but I’m really excited.”

She’d planned to go to the Big Apple months ago, but with a new gig at Renegade Craft, her vision has shifted. “It is very much in a different direction than all the plans I was planning on.” Previously with no full-time job ahead, her big move framed around teaching at Urban Glass. “I have 3 weekend workshops,” she said, “One of my favorite parts about my life is working with this school, and that they respect me and want me to teach there.”

First though, she must squeeze in a pitstop to San Francisco for work. “There’s a lot of moving parts that are visual and a lot of editorial stuff,” she said of her position as the traveling market’s Social Media Content Manager. McNair’s snippy copywriting and aesthetic posts cultivate “little experiences that people are experiencing,” a skilled gained by garnering her own following and proving she could curate a brand by building herself up over years. 

“It was easier back then,” she said of starting up over 5 years ago, when the internet was less saturated and more blog-centric. Still, getting over 15,000 followers and plenty of sales means working “really hard at all this stuff I made up here,” she said, “I taught myself how to do a very specific position.” It’s the first time she’s been employed by someone other than herself in about 10 years, previously working at an ice cream shop, then a thrift store. “That’s my life — ice cream an old clothes,” she said, “nothing has changed, they’re still both weekly things.”

Her NYC digs are a reflection of her social media savvy — she’s shacking up in a beautiful house in the Bronx with a couple she met on Instagram years ago. When they were opening up Mottley Kitchen in 2016, Kelsie offered to help in the kitchen, and they’ve been friends since.

Where to say farewell to Kelsie

“I literally look like a giant penis,” Kelsie said after putting on a beanie found in the pile, “this hat is over”

Busy with her social media content manager job, she wants to focus less on writing music, and shift her genre focus. Lyrics are her “love language,” music her mode of communication for complicated feelings, but crafting songs can be emotionally draining. “I love writing music, I just don’t have the energy to always be writing music like that,” she said, “and I don’t really write any other kind.” Pyrrhic Whim is dreamy and dramatic, with beats and drones that are dazing. After listening to a lot of alternative R&B, she wants to strip the bells and whistles of her performance and have fun as a jazz singer.

“Playing someone else’s soulful stuff would be a wonderful space to be in; it’s so sensual and old, I want to be apart of it,” she said, “Just a dark, shadowy room where music fills the whole space, and it’s my job to be another instrument instead of all these trends and sounds.”

Her hopes for the city are new experiences, lacking here but plentiful in her new home. “When i have a good day in New York, it’s never like ‘oh, that was fun’ it’s like ‘shit, I’m gonna remember that experience for the rest of my life.” In the opposite direction, this extreme is equally strong. “New York bites you sometimes, it gets rough,” she said, “Men on the street are rude and aggressive and awful, everything is super expensive, there’s so many things, overstimulating in every way, no one cares about you — it’s the loneliest place there is.”

Lying within this premise is her greatest fear — unhappiness “The worst part about leaving [Norfolk] is there are so many awesome people here, they are the best people, and it takes a long time to find friends when you get older, it’s just harder,” she said, “these are the ones i’m gonna have forever. There’s a couple more spaces in me for that, but it’s starting to close up.”

Nonsense will not be brought to New York for the sake of friends. “I have to be my most genuine self so I don’t have to act like someone else when they do let me in,” she said, “if you’re letting me in, you know who I am so I don’t have to work any harder”

“I think back on myself even a year ago, and I keep getting better but I’m still so dumb, I can’t wait to look back and see all the things i’m making bad decision about right now – I’ll be so wise, but I still won’t be there; none of us ripen all the way.”

Maybe, I offer, we are all avocados that are too hard to eat once opened, stuck in the fridge only to be browned a few days later, but never soft. Kelsie might not be totally happy in New York, but she certainly isn’t here and none of us ever are all the way. “If you’re 100%,” Kelsie responded, “you’re more than likely in a manic episode.”

“I’m overprotective of myself,” Kelsie said, only to ensure she’ll be taken as she is or not at all. “That comes with growing up, that’s the best.”

Why Kelsie’s voice rose two times that day

When snorting like children, our laughs high pitched after sucking helium from leftover birthday balloons floating about, I didn’t feel so grown up. Sprawled on a newfound friend’s bed, feet kicked up, flipping through magazines and chatting about hopes & dreams, I felt like a teenager. With a hole closing up inside her, reserving space for a new place, I felt fortunate to catch a genuine glimpse of Kelsie.

She took a puff of the ballon and contemplated. “It’s not because we’re not good,” she squeaked, “it’s just because there’s so many people, I have to do so much to matter so little.” Her voice and mindset were heightened, possibly just a trait of the always overthinking Pisces. 

Like a high school girl, I read Kelsie her horoscope. We’d classed and sassed up from Seventeen, with problematic glossy pages replaces with empowering matte media. Alongside thick art publications and makers magazines, featuring inspirational artists like Sarah Perez, was Broccoli. Reflective of her latest endeavor, Smirk Supply, the cannabis-friendly magazine is smart but fun, mature but creative.

“Say a prayer to the weed fairy that you’ll be supported in your wildest dreams, and take a puff.” I read aloud dramatically, “You set the tone this season through the faith you show in yourself. If you are clouded by vibrations of doubt, question them. You are a sensitive soul, so use cannabis to tune into your own energy, not the emotions of the people around you.”

“Yeah,” possibly after not totally staying still for several days, she paused and pondered, eventually smirking. “Wow.”

Ming Ying Hong Finds Sublimity in Uncertainty

The Head Not the Face , 76″ x 126″, Charcoal, marker, graphite on paper, 2016

By Shannon Jay

Since Ming Ying Hong moved to Norfolk from St. Louis, her studio space has gotten a bit smaller. While it’s still able to accommodate her large-scale work, “there’s no room to look back at something,” she said, “there’s not a lot of editorial distance.” This added ambivalence in her process embodies the ethos of her latest exhibit, “Conditions of Uncertainty.” The collection of chaotic charcoal works is on view via popblossom at Work Program Architects in Monticello Arcade until March 16th.

  Empty and Full,  Graphite on mylar, 12″x12″, 2016

“I just feel like it’s okay to be at a place where you’re [unsure],” Hong said of her exploration of “hazy” area between binaries, and the discomfort people feel within that space. Her explosive portraits are “visible but not tangible,” and hope to produce ambiguous viewpoints wherein meaning emerges.

While the immersive scale of Hong’s drawings reminded me of Mark Rothko, she felt his motives more defined. “When you look at a Rothko, he wants you to feel a very specific [emotion], there’s no other ways to interpret that,” she said, “with mine it’s placed in these grey areas, there’s a level of questioning happening, and the hope that in questioning something, someone’s experience or understanding of something becomes more expanded.”

“There’s a level of fear” Hong said of disjointed subjects, who are always “on the brink of disillusions, and in forming them they fall apart.” It’s something she explores across all mediums. A graduate installation piece Hong named after a Mark Strand poem called “Keeping Things Whole” filled a room with fog to seem as if “you’re kind of floating in space.” Barriers of the room’s walls became invisible in her attempt to “dissolve this idea of you as a person – this sounds cheesy, but so you’re one with the space.”  

“My ideas drive my practice rather than being loyal to drawing,” Hong said about using multiple mediums. “I think everyone starts with drawing, as a kid that’s the most accessible art form,” she said, “It’s amazing that you’re able to make something…being able to make images suddenly emerge, to have your abstract ideas being formed on a page.” Intrigue with immersive abstractions, haphazard sculptures, and smoke-filled rooms, come from Hong’s interest in ecstatic states. “This moment where your body is there at the same time you’re not entirely,” she explained, “when the external world doesn’t become entirely understandable.”

“static states are near death”

“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,” a favorite piece by Caspar David Friedrich she cites as a big inspiration, embodies this feeling. “It’s small but still depicts the sublime in a way that’s contemporary for its time,” she said, “now of course we have to make things bigger to do that.” In such a sensory saturated world, Hong’s scale is forcibly attention-grabbing. “I think people have enough attention span to do anything they want,” she said, “but in order to feel fear or awe I think you have to be experiencing something slightly new.”

Hong in the studio by Richard Nickel

With the natural world of “Wanderer” already explored time over, folks have turned to technology for new horizons. Not even amazed by and iPhone anymore, Virtual Reality has created a more immersive and exploitative recreation/invention of environments. With projections and other tech, Hong’s works take organic shapes and allude to natural phenomenon. She plays with the juxtaposition of “something you’re slightly familiar with that feels natural, but is nonetheless artificial.”  

A new way she’s doing this is incorporating sex-safe silicone into portraits. The “squishy” material overlaying a drawing of Hong’s long-time partner will look “kind of like a disease,” and spell out his insecurities in braille. She hopes to “question that type of masculinity” with soft material and a vulnerable message. “I feel like that material is a simulation of flesh and a symbol of desire,” she said, “not only his desire to have a better body, but a yearning to touch flesh.”

Hong’s use of unique materials to mimic reality made her classic Romanticism influence even more striking. Her work reminded me of more contemporary artists (such as Cai Guo-Qiang, who shares Hong’s Chinese heritage and interest in explosions). However, ideas of art from centuries past manifest in Hong’s work “in a way that’s more in our times.”

For her, she’s still trying to convey the powerful and relevant feeling Friedrich’s painted exactly 200 years ago. The wanderer looking at endless earth from the top of a cliff embodies exact uncertainty she hopes for viewers: “the fight of being amazed, but nevertheless being fearful.”