Armando Ramos Interview- Studio Visit

Armando Ramos is a sculptor who works in a variety of materials.  He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Valley City State University in Valley City, North Dakota.  I had a chance to visit with him over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Armando Ramos in his studio

 You work with 2D images in conjunction with your sculptural work.  How do they work together and influence each other?

I try to approach them in the same way.  Having a small studio forced me to look at all the work as one because I wasn’t able to separate the two into mental compartments or spaces.  I began to look at what material was most appropriate to the idea, rather that beginning with the materials.  When you’re a student, a material is often associated with a department, but it isn’t in the real world.  Stuff is just stuff and you have to find the materials that have the right properties for your idea.  It’s all the same work to me.

Altered paintings

Your work references pop culture and childhood.  How do you find images and objects for your work?

When I started out I would choose images that had meaning to me, like a specific memory.  Latin American pop culture or imagery that I had experienced as a young person was something I gravitated to.  Now I’m more interested in objects and images that aren’t really about me, but have a wider reach.  I went to the historical museum in Minneapolis and saw some images of Americana from the 1920’s.  These were ads and boxes from old toys and I started to think about them as a sort of propaganda that communicates this fake idea about how the ideal world is or should be.  The repeated image reinforces this and gives it strength. This power of images to persuade and train us to think along a certain line is something that I’m interested in.  I want my own work to be a process of revealing how and questioning how images function.

I used to go to the thrift stores or junk stores for inspiration, but I also find things on the street or at junk sales. I also buy postcards and write down words and phrases that are interesting and ambiguous.  The illustrations in old books are something I look at and will sometimes scan to create a template for a piece.

Finished work in the studio

Studio

What do you think about the life these objects and images had before you encountered them or do you? 

The very idea that someone used these things makes them compelling to me.  They were precious to someone.  I have a piece cast from a plastic, Halloween ghost and someone had to keep it in their basement, clean it and plug it in for Halloween year after year.  The history still lives in the object, but by remaking it I can somehow reveal other parts of it that the original owner never saw.  The ghost is a weird, phallic image, but the family that owned it probably had more that one and never saw that in them.

How do you think your background in ceramics has influenced your approach to sculpture?  

When I began working with clay, I really responded to the material and the process of making, but I realize that I approach material in general in a more direct sculptural way.  It is a complex material that demands planning and thinking ahead, but I wish I had begun to work with other materials earlier. 

Ceramic heads, finished and unfired, in the studio

You have a lot of toys and other objects around the studio, do you keep these around as influences?

I see them as objects of interest.  Either the tactile quality or color are things I think about in my own work.  I’m also interested in the relationships between the parts.

What themes run through your work?

The tension and awkwardness in the vulnerability of objects is something I like to explore.  I’m interested in looking at another side of things that we ordinarily don’t look at.  Something soft and comforting might become something ominous, or a sentimental decorative object that has a specific meaning in a holiday or in childhood might be altered to communicate an entirely different meaning.  Visual communication is at the heart of it.  I’m really trying to explore modes of visual communication and how the disruption of that communication can reveal the process itself.

Painting the wood sections of a sculpture

Do you work in series or have you been making individual pieces? 

I think I have been working in individual pieces, but my work is going more towards the direction of series.  This last piece I’ve been working with is a Halloween ghost and I cast them in series in different colors.  Right now they are in groupings of three or four, but I want to make a mass installation of 40 or 50 in a space.  A lot of my work is related even if the pieces are different, but the repetition is definitely something that I’m working with.  It also takes some discipline to work through an idea entirely and not get distracted by something else.  The  series allows me to play out an idea and realize it’s potential.

What questions do you ask yourself when you are making work?

I ask myself what is the most essential part that I want to get across.  How can I communicate this in the most basic way.  I began the ghosts with an interest in a nativity scene from the thrift store, but it was gone when I went back to get it.  So I began to think about what elements of it interested me.  The ghost was sort of a bastardization of something that was sacred.  The outdoor nativity scene that I remembered from my childhood had been coopted into the fake sacred image for a completely secular ‘holiday’.  The image was something that I thought revealed the absurdity of we use images to construct meaning.

Finished ceramic 'Ghosts' in the studio

What are you working on now and what do you have coming up? 

I’ve been finishing a group of work to install at an exhibition at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana.  I plan on working with more of the repeated image.  I’m also in an exhibition at the Rosalux gallery in Minneapolis starting in December and going through the first week of January and in a survey exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the Midwest at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota.

Installing the Show!

This past weekend Craig, Hannah and I were in Cedar Rapids to install our show at Mt Mercy University.  Thanks to Andy and Heidi for all their help and hospitality.

Andy helping with the floor piece

The show is open now and though I wasn't able to take any finished photos, I have posted some                     installation shots. 

Thank you student workers!

There will be an Artist's Lecture at 4pm, October 11 and a Reception from 5-7pm the same evening at the Janalyn Hanson White Gallery at Mt Mercy.

These took up most of the time

Porcelain rods or 'leaves', cages and objects

The first in a set of 4

The work is up now and as soon as I get some finished images I will post them.  Thanks to everyone for their help.

Collection- A Collaborative Exhibition

Thanks to Siena Heights University, Klemm Gallery, the art faculty and especially Natalie and Tim for having Craig and I as visiting artists in conjunction with our collaborative exhibition,  Collection.  We started this work at our residency this summer, 2012 at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and though we didn't come away with many finished pieces, we were able to work through the collaborative process and begin working out ideas we developed further at home in Wisconsin.

Collection, Gallery View

Both of us are interested in how objects act as intermediaries between our lived experience, memory and transformation.  I think that we ultimately found ways to respond and elaborate upon object images in an improvisational way that allowed each of us to follow that pathway to wherever it led.

Collection, Gallery View

Collection, Gallery View

Two of the three pieces in Eden? were really the only finished pieces from the summer.  We made some of the flowers in Floriculture, but never saw it complete until Craig assembled part of it in our garage before we left for Michigan.  We had to assemble the work in the space to really see it finished.

Eden?, stoneware and wood,  2012

The collaborative process forced us to work in a different ways and allowed for the pursuit of ideas that didn't directly correlate with what we had been doing in our individual work.  Eden? was an extension of an idea I had started with in the winter of 2012 that explored color and image as symbol as well as allowed me to play with using the plastic quality of the material instead of subjugating it through craftsmanship.  This piece was a starting point for our collaboration and allowed us to begin working together and thinking out how our various processes and images might function together.

Eden?, detail

Floriculture was an exploration of working with the material in a more direct and playful way as well as a way to define a space without the heaviness that often comes with clay.  Craig, our former student Elyse and I made the pieces together over a period of time and I like the idea of various hands and experiences being brought together under the umbrella of the same idea.  

Floriculture, stoneware and wood,  2012

Sometimes I would cringe at the flowers they were making, but I just had to go with it and once they were finished  we saw how the variation of touch and form in the flowers really made the work more compelling.  The colors act as a counterpoint to the lack of color on the walls and is something that we are interested in expanding as a more participatory element in the work.

Floriculture, detail

Plush has a relationship with Replica/ Echo in that the individual pieces are things in themselves and the shadow of these things.  Most of the materials are stuffed animals that we bought in bags from the thrift store.  These things were sad and bittersweet and seemed to be in the same category of sad miniature teacups left behind in the antique mall.  The dipped and imbedded pieces are really the shadows of the things as the original item is destroyed in the making, while the real bundled objects are the obscured counterpoint to these images.  The undipped pieces are bundled and obscured with yarn and other bric a brac some of which are repeated in Replica/ Echo.

Plush,  porcelain, fabric, mixed media and found objects

I do think that being surrounded by a toddler and their fixation on stuffed animals influenced this work. They carry an emotional weight that is eventually cast away until the animals themselves end up in a big plastic bag in the thrift store.

Plush, Detail

Replica/ Echo started with Craig's coke bottles and other common images from mass culture, like gremlins, gnomes and other objects that are often imbedded in his pieces.  He wanted to use them in the work, but I was hesitant to say the least since a coke bottle seemed to have no gravitas. Once I began to think about it in relationship to drawing, I began to see the possibilities in incorporating and transforming objects that announce their ordinariness.  Craig's individual work is an investigation of the transformation of images, so working with this idea in a different way seemed fitting.

Replica/ Echo, porcelain and found object,  2012

I was struck how these objects that seemed so banal were the same objects I often put together to create a still life for my students.  I thought about how the process of drawing can force the investigation of the mundane object and through that process transform it.  We decided to create a grouping of ordinary objects in a series that explored the thing itself, the cast image and the 'sketched' copy in porcelain.  Craig wanted to use forms from the hardware store as presentation, but instead decided to make tactile replicas that were cast to create multiples.

Most of the objects are from the thrift store or are figurines and images we have used in our work.  I've always had an interest in the idea of ordinariness and was able to incorporate objects that didn't really seem compelling at first, like the coke bottle or the furby, but that become compelling during the process of repetition and drawing.  

Collection, Gallery View

Reclamation Series 3, porcelain,  2012

This way of creating collections and forms with repeating shapes informed much of the other work as well.  The sculptural forms in the Reclamation Series were created with cast found bottles, objects and ceramic waste material from the studio.  The individual forms echo some of the pieces in Replica/ Echo and also play with the idea of function in that they and almost all the other objects in the exhibition share a relationship to the body and need the body or an action to animate them.

Tangible 3, porcelain and string,  2012

These are images of the Tangible Series and for me all of the pieces have to do with touch and the animation of objects.  In my own work I like to use objects that carry implications, such as keys or locks, but Craig has also made tools and other implements that are like extensions of the hand and these can also carry multiple implications.  I began by making the hammer and moved on to the ax or hatchet while Craig cast these images from found objects, I sketched them out in porcelain.  

Tangible 2, porcelain and string,  2012

Tangible 1, porcelain, string and ribbon,  2012

This last piece, Garland was a three way collaboration between myself, Elyse and Craig.  I have been making flower rounds in my own work and Craig and I created a collaborative flower form at the Bray, and though we never used it, it acted as a starting point for these pieces.  They allowed me to veer away from the 'crafted' image and rather explore the direct influence of the hand as well as give over their finishing to someone else.

Garland, porcelain,  2012

Garland,  detail

I think of the work and exhibition as a work in progress and a way to open myself up to different ways of seeing and working.  Teaching drawing and foundations has expanded my interest in materiality and the presentation of objects.  Although all of the pieces are 'crafted' in some way, I am not necessarily interested in craftsmanship and facility with material being the focus of what I am making and am gravitating towards letting the images and material speak for itself.

I will be posting more work on my website after the school term is over in mid November at www.debbiekupinsky.com and you can view Craig's work at www.craigcliffordceramics.com.  His solo show goes up at Pewabic Pottery in Detroit on January 25th, 2013.

Thanks to everyone at the Archie Bray Foundation for all their great support and being as wonderful as ever.