← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
New NYC Subway Murals Redefine Geography
00:24:19
A professor has created three artworks at Hunter college station at 68th street that are now a part of the MTA art collection.
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- [00:10]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Lisa Corinne Davis is an artist, and you can see her work in several places in New York City. First at the Miles McHenry Gallery. She has a current show there called Hope. I say this right.
- [00:24]
B
Syllogism, syllogism, syllogism.
- [00:27]
A
And you can see her when you get off the 6 train at 68th street and Lexington Avenue. Davis is a recent addition to the MTA Arts and Design program, installing new pieces as part of the MTA's permanent collection. And that station is a fitting because she has been teaching at Hunter College for more than two decades. Lisa Corinne Davis is a member of the National Academy of Design. She was a Guggenheim Fellow, and she joins us now in studio. It is really nice to meet you.
- [00:54]
B
Thank you, Alison. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:56]
A
When you looked around at the station at 68th street and Lex, before this all started, what did you see in this space? And then how did you decide, what am I going to do in this space?
- [01:09]
B
Well, first, I want to just add one thing. I also was an MFA student at Hunter College, so I have the trifecta here of student, professor, and now the station. That station's a really interesting, complex mix of Upper east side people, students coming and going, all different ages, generations, types of people. It's always active. It's a potpourri of what. What New York City's all about.
- [01:36]
A
What did you think you wanted to do with the space with your art?
- [01:42]
B
My work is about, in general, locations and spaces. And I wanted to make sure that the mosaic showed a navigational system, that people were on the move with abstract elements that suggest movement. Also a kind of a lot of frenetic energy, which I think is present in the work. And also spots where you stop, locations, resting places. You know, whether you're going to a restaurant or you're going to a classroom, those are places of stop in the navigation of the Upper east side.
- [02:18]
A
How did it come to you? How did the program come to you?
- [02:20]
B
I have no idea. So I have been up for several subway stations. The MTA contacted me. I had the pleasure of working with Ya Ling Chin there, and that was a pleasure. It's quite a rigorous process. You have to make a proposal, and then if you are, then you're presented that proposal to arts professionals that are random, so you don't know who they are ahead of time. And then you wait and you see if you get it.
- [02:51]
A
Well, once you did get it, do you have a free Rein or does the MTA give you guidelines?
- [02:57]
B
They give you guidelines, and you're always trying to be in conversation with the neighborhood that you are making these works for. So in the proposal, they suggest that you do that, and then you try to make an artwork that reflects the location, which in this case was one I knew quite well. And hopefully, in the end, it does have something to say about the location of the station.
- [03:21]
A
It's interesting because you described it as quite a diverse location. You have a lot of different people going in and out of that station.
- [03:29]
B
Correct.
- [03:30]
A
How did that influence your work?
- [03:33]
B
In the sense that I hope that the work suggests a kind of multitude of personalities in it, through colors and fragments of glass that make up the mosaic. I just hope that in an abstract work that someone looking at it is always bringing a bit of themselves to what they're looking at. And therefore, there's a navigation between self and what's proposed in the abstract work.
- [04:01]
A
One of the pieces is titled Liminal Locations. What does that mean to you?
- [04:06]
B
Liminal, transitional, between here and there. So that's exactly what I'm trying to suggest.
- [04:14]
A
What first went into designing that piece of Liminal Locations.
- [04:19]
B
So all the works there are reference to my regular paintings that I make.
- [04:24]
A
We're talking about those too.
- [04:25]
B
Okay. This was a little different because I had to start with a digital image. So I used the vocabulary that I use in my normal paintings and mixed them up and came up with three different designs. Two that are more flank the subway tracks, that are more similar, and then a slightly different one that's on a curved wall as you enter the station.
- [04:49]
A
Yeah, I'm interested in the one on the curved wall. Describe your path for getting that around that curve.
- [04:56]
B
Well, that was really the MTA department and also the mayor of Munich who created the piece. So I create this digital file, and then it goes to a mosaicist. And in this case, Meyer of Munich is a fifth generation glass mosaicist that exists in Munich, Germany. And they did an incredible translation of the painting.
- [05:24]
A
It's interesting because it's a large abstract piece, and it kind of looks like sometimes it looks like there's a little bit of a window someplace, and someplace it looks like there's a little bit of a river in different locations. How do you hope commuters who are trying to go from point A to point B, what do you think they. What do you hope they will encounter when they come upon your piece?
- [05:47]
B
Well, I hope they encounter the things you suggest, you know, and that they are looking at something that implies a Map implies locating oneself, going to locations, being in locations, looking at locations. The work is supposed to be maximal and minimal at the same time. It could be aerial or not. So the sense of just movement. I don't want the person to be somewhere, but be really aware that they're moving to and from spaces.
- [06:22]
A
We're talking to abstract artist Lisa Corinne Davis. Her work is on display at the Miles McHenry Gallery, and she's also a recent addition to the MTA Arts program. You can see her work at 60 68th and Lexington Avenue Station. The other piece, the one that kind of meets up, is tempestuous terrain, and it's interesting. There's more like a grid like setting in this one, and it goes from one side of it to the other side of it. How did you want to use sort of the grid like setting, especially because you're in a subway station?
- [06:57]
B
Sure, sure. I use the grid in every work. It's somewhere in every piece I do, I think of the grid as a very factual, stable, abstract language, very measured, unquestioning. And then in every piece, I try to mess with that grid so it becomes more personal, subjective, human. And so the grid is not only the grid of New York City, the grid of fact and measured space, but it's also the starting point for how to bring that into a more subjective realm.
- [07:38]
A
What does it mean to you to have this piece of art where so many people can see it, the world?
- [07:45]
B
It's just been the best experience I've had. Strangers contact me that live on the Upper east side and say how much they're enjoying the station now that they're traveling through it. Of course, my students at Hunter College get to see the work too, which is incredible. It's just really great to get the work out into a public space. Not that I don't love the art gallery, but it's a different kind of space where one can casually observe it, spend as much time as they want, zoom by it if they want, but it means the world to have that work there.
- [08:22]
A
And before we leave this, is there any subway art that you've seen recently that you thought, oh, that is a beautiful piece of art?
- [08:31]
B
Oh, I can't answer that question because there's so many. I mean, I think that the MTA Art and design program is making so many stations beautiful. The Second Avenue line is particularly one of my favorite.
- [08:44]
A
It's gorgeous.
- [08:45]
B
Right? And so there's. And there's many of the artists that are doing these projects are people I know, so I'm not Gonna pick favorites.
- [08:54]
A
That's fair. Let's talk about your exhibit at the Miles McHenry Gallery for people who wanna see pictures. I took pictures on Saturday. They're up on our Instagram.
- [09:04]
B
Thank you for going.
- [09:05]
A
Yeah. At all of it nyc. I did my best. So they're not professional pictures, but they do give you a sense of the show. First of all, I wanna talk. What does the title mean?
- [09:16]
B
Oh, well, I have to thank my friend Jerry Lieblick, who I met at YADO this past spring, who's a great theater playwright for that term. He came to look at the paintings in the studio and threw out that word which I had never heard before, syllogism. And it's a form of reasoning which a conclusion is drawn from or not to assume premises. So that's why, that's the essence of how I want my work to live. That it's somehow some assumption or determination comes from premises that every individual brings themselves to the pieces.
- [09:52]
A
The gallery is just full of these huge paintings, like 80 by 60. I think one of them was why that size?
- [10:02]
B
I work best at that size. I don't know, it's something about the body. It's something about being able to create greater scale differences within the work. I think when things get smaller for me, I can't make the range of perceived scale that I like to have in larger pieces.
- [10:25]
A
And I described you as an abstract artist. What does that mean to you to be an abstract artist?
- [10:30]
B
It's very important to me. Abstraction to me is the felt. It's about not. I'm not telling a specific story. I'm not narrating something. I'm working from the inside, not the outside. And so in my work I'm talking about a very specific feeling I had in my life as a light skinned African American woman who grew up in a Orthodox Jewish neighborhood and went to a Quaker school.
- [11:04]
A
That's a lot.
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B
That's a lot.
- [11:06]
A
That's a lot to handle.
- [11:08]
B
Yes. It's a specific experience. It's not a generic one.
- [11:16]
A
Some of your work uses sharp angles. Sometimes it's more of an amoeba, like form. What determines the shape of your work.
- [11:25]
B
Right. The works are very conversant. I start anywhere and. And so. And because I'm always trying to disrupt a kind of perception. If it starts hard edged, geometric again, feeling more factual and determined, I try to, in the next move, loosen it up so things get more lyrical and biomorphic and expressionistic. So the works are combinations of those languages that go back and forth in a conversant way until they land in a spot where I feel things are very indeterminate.
- [12:05]
A
I'm speaking with artist Lisa Korin Davis. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of It. You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We are joined by abstract artist Lisa Corinne Davis. Her work is on display at the Miles McHenry Gallery. It's in West Chelsea on West 22nd Street. And she's also a recent addition to the MTA Arts Program. You can see her work at 68th and Lexington Avenue. Stop. I want to go back to the gallery show. One piece is called Fleeting Form. It's a painting really bright pinks and then there are blues involved. First of all, how do you decide on the names of the paintings? Let's start there.
- [12:54]
B
Each paint. Oh, I have a lot of fun with the titles. Each painting title is something that, again, seems very pragmatic, like form, and then something that seems a little more subjective, like fleeting. And I love alliteration, so that often plays into the titles.
- [13:12]
A
I was looking at one painting and I got really close and it was really interesting because it was geometric, but underneath there was sort of a C shaped, I don't know, form that was underneath that you had painted over. And I was curious about that.
- [13:26]
B
Yeah, I never give up on a painting. I. It's. Once I start, it just keeps going until it is completed. That shape was a shape I thought I wanted in a painting. It was something different and a big kind of gesture. And as the painting developed, it made no sense, so it got buried under the layers on top. So there's evidence of it there, but it's not a prominent element in the painting anymore.
- [13:58]
A
If you'd like to see any of these paintings, you go to our Instagram stories llovenyc. You have mostly oil on canvas. I think there's one acrylic painting in there.
- [14:10]
B
No, it's probably one that started with acrylic and then went to oil.
- [14:13]
A
Yeah, I gotcha. And in the smaller gallery over to the left, they're much smaller works, like 18 by 14 works. Are they in conversation with the bigger pieces or are they their own things?
- [14:25]
B
They're their own things. When I go to residencies, I often can't take big canvases with me, and I always have this sense that I'm going to draw. But then I realize I don't draw. I'm a painter. So I have all these pencils and interesting drawing things with me, and I can't draw, so they become acrylic paintings on paper. And so last year, I was at several residency and. And made a bunch of those. I think they inform the paintings, but they are a separate thing.
- [15:00]
A
What questions would you like people to have after going to the gallery and spending some time with your paintings?
- [15:07]
B
I would like them to ask what they're looking at. You know, and normally people sense the map metaphor that underlies everything. And so people often associate themselves. This reminds me of this, or this is this location or is that Paris or that kind of thing. I want them to be aware that those things aren't really in the paintings, that they're bringing their subjective self, the way they interpret it, their histories, their biases into what they want that painting to be. And again, it parallels an experience of my own people wanting me to be what they wanted me to be based on who they were in the world. So I want them to be aware that they're making these determinations and that they have questions.
- [15:59]
A
Was there any painting in that series which was harder than the rest?
- [16:05]
B
Yeah, unfortunately, I can't think of the title. There's one when you come into the right that was a killer, and it has become people's favorites from the exhibition. But I feel like I was abused in some way by that painting, so I can't even look at it. So there's. I'm glad it's being seen in a positive light, but I have a hard time looking at it. It took so long.
- [16:28]
A
You just had to keep going.
- [16:29]
B
Had to keep going. It was beating me, trying to beat me, but it didn't in the end.
- [16:35]
A
Well, I heard you in one interview say that you're a slow painter.
- [16:38]
B
Yes.
- [16:39]
A
What does that mean, to be a slow painter?
- [16:41]
B
It takes a long time to make decisions for the next layers, their oil. So it's materially very slow. They're layered, so they are slow paintings.
- [16:55]
A
Let me ask you a really naive question. You said that oil makes it slow. Why is that? It takes a long time to dry.
- [17:00]
B
It takes a long time to dry. And when you're putting a layer on top of a layer, sometimes you want it to be wet on wet, which means you see kind of this juicy brushwork, and sometimes you want it to be more still. The paint on top, and therefore the layer below has to be dry. So I use a lot of oil in the paint, and oil makes it even slower to dry. So patience is important here.
- [17:25]
A
Do you remember what your first exposure to art was?
- [17:29]
B
Oh, I absolutely do. When in second grade in Friends School in Baltimore, Maryland. A teacher took us out with paper and a sponge and paint and said, looked at Magus, look at the landscape, and said, paint that. And we took the sponge, we dabbed it in the paint, and somehow foliage appeared. And I just thought that was magic, that somehow what I was looking at could be translated with these tools to an image that represented what I was looking at. It's pure magic. And that was it. I was off to the races after that.
- [18:15]
A
When did you think, I'm going to be an artist? When did that come to you?
- [18:19]
B
I don't think I could do anything else. I don't think I was capable. But that kind of way of seeing the world, that happened in second grade onwards. I don't think you ever forget. So you want to keep making things, you want to keep translating the world into something and everything else is fine, but not as interesting as that.
- [18:48]
A
When did you get serious about painting?
- [18:50]
B
In college. I always knew I was going to pursue fine arts. My mother seriously wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. Of course she did, right as she should. And I went off to Cornell University, majoring in fine art, and then transferred to Pratt Institute in New York.
- [19:10]
A
When you were in an academic situation, did it change the way you felt about art or did it enhance the way you felt about art?
- [19:21]
B
I think it. It enhanced it. I mean, I think in the undergrad level, you're learning the mechanics, the how to, so that's fascinating. In the grad level, you're learning to have your own voice and you find this population of people that you never leave behind, they're still your friends, you still talk to them, they're your posse. So, yeah, it was. Both were enhancing in different ways.
- [19:49]
A
We talked about what abstract art meant to you. Was that initially what you gravitated towards, or did you gravitate towards still life? When did you start painting and when did it switch over to abstract?
- [20:03]
B
Very interesting. I started as a representational painter, I think, as most people do. And when I was pregnant with my first child, I came up with this question about what identity, race, culture meant and how imposed it is on people in sometimes false ways. So I simply did self portraits for years, imposing clear objects of cultural heritage, like a grease vase over my face, setting up the question, is there a relationship between that woman lurking there and that Greek vase? And if there is, why are you assuming that? Et cetera. But that played itself out, and again, I was more interested in the feeling I had navigating different spaces, cultures in my childhood. And that really holds a firm place in what abstraction can do about the felt and the visceral.
- [21:11]
A
My guest is artist Lisa Corinne Davis. You mentioned children. How did children change the way that you were an artist? How did it change your practice initially, anyway?
- [21:26]
B
It made it much more organized.
- [21:28]
A
Oh, really?
- [21:32]
B
When my son was born, I knew I had a choice. At that point, I could give it all up. I had every excuse to stop, but I knew I couldn't stop. So I set out a project of just doing small works on paper. These portraits that I was talking about that I could do very quickly. And so when he slept, I worked. And then later, when he got older, he spent time in my studio doing his things while I did mine. Yeah.
- [22:01]
A
And why did you decide to go that route?
- [22:04]
B
Which route?
- [22:05]
A
To paint. I mean, you could have given it up and gone back.
- [22:08]
B
It's true. It wasn't. Again, it wasn't a choice. I can't describe it more clearly than that. It just wasn't a choice. I knew I would not be happy or complete without painting.
- [22:23]
A
When you look back, what was your big break as an artist?
- [22:26]
B
My big break was showing at the June Kelly Gallery. A friend of mine, painter Philhmonia Williamson, said, you know, she showed there. She said, I'd like to show June your work.
- [22:39]
A
And.
- [22:40]
B
And I said, I don't know. I don't really have anything to show her.
- [22:45]
A
That's a big gallery.
- [22:48]
B
And so my husband at the time said, you know, well, when are you going to show anyone anything? So June came over. Being June, very honest person, said, I like the work. I can't sell this work, but I like the work. But then came back later, and it changed her mind. So that was the big break.
- [23:06]
A
That's interesting when someone says, I like your work, but I can't sell your work.
- [23:10]
B
Yeah, I loved it. I love the clarity of that, because often these discussions aren't that clear. So I love that she knew who her buyers were. She knew what my work was, and until she felt that had shifted, she was clear she couldn't sell it.
- [23:26]
A
And you were able to make the shift?
- [23:28]
B
She was able to make the shift. She came back maybe a year later and decided differently.
- [23:34]
A
You teach now at Hunter, which is great because it exposes you to the culture, because the culture is also always changing. What are your students interested in?
- [23:42]
B
Oh, my God. First off, I just have to say I love my job. My students are fantastic. Undergrad and grad. My students are interested, primarily interested in no technology. They're really tired of it and trying to find ways to get around it.
- [24:04]
A
Artist Lisa Corrine Jones. You can see her work at the Miles McHenry Gallery and you can also see her at 68th and Lexington Avenue Station. Thank you so much for coming in Lisa. We really appreciate it.
- [24:18]
B
Thank you Alison. It was a joy and now a.
- [24:21]
C
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D
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