Interview with Mike Andrews

Interview with Mike Andrews

Daniel Gerwin: How did you begin making tapestries? Did you start as a painter, and if so, what led you to switch your approach?

Mike Andrews: I started making this type of work a few years ago. The first pieces were called “Sure Licks”. I used a homemade frame loom to make a gnarly fabric that I turned into dense sculptural forms that sat on the floor. They were a combination of materials like yarn, glazed ceramic, day-glo plastic, and dyed polyurethane foam. At the time, I was interested in material conflict within singular forms, and how materials carry historical and metaphorical information. I have always been attracted to the kitschy power of materials from the craft store, and their manufactured sentimentality. They reference homemade forms so laden with genuine emotion that they become horrible and oppressive. To me that conflict is simultaneously sweet and terrible.

DG: Homemade forms "so laden with emotion that they become horrible and oppressive" - could you give some examples?

MA: Were you ever the lucky recipient of a weirdo handmade present from your Grandma or your crazy Auntie?

DG: My grandma didn't do that, and now that I think about it, neither did any of my aunts. What did your grandma or aunt used to make for you - do you still have any of those things?

MA: My Grandma was always making stuff out of yarn, fabric, and paper, and she was always encouraging us to have some kind of project in the works. I still have this great doorstop that she made - it’s totally strange. When we would go on vacation, my family would have these competitions to make the most pathetic thing possible. They were hysterical. I learned what I now know as kitsch at a very young age. It helped shape my bent outlook on the world.

DG: It’s interesting that you're coming to tapestry from sculpture, I would not have guessed that from your recent work, since it hangs on the wall like painting. What are some of the specific painting traditions that have informed your approach, and what are some of the textile references?

MA: After I made a few of the Sure Licks I decided to allow myself to leave the woven sheets alone, and exhibit them without the addition of other materials. Because I considered my studio work as sculpture, it was a big move for me to specifically include references to painting and textiles.

The painters Jonathan Lasker and Albert Oehlen have been consistent models for me of how to visualize a construction and it’s demise in the same work. I admire artists who aggressively challenge ideas of taste and completion. The type of work that grabs me is work that looks quick, messy, and hurried, but upon closer inspection you can tell there is focus and logic.

I also admire artists who work intuitively with non-intuitive construction techniques like weaving. Sheila Hicks made these incredible lap-sized weavings while traveling around the world. She grabbed whatever material was available to make these quick and tactile pieces. They have the immediacy of a drawing, by means of a labored process. The color relationships within the pieces are really uneasy too, which make them punchy and confusing.

DG: I just saw some great work by Sheila Hicks last week, and I’m not surprised that she’s important to you. Can you talk a bit about your approach to form and color when you're making a piece? How do you develop the form of a given work, and how do your decisions about color evolve over the course of making that work?

MA: Some of the tapestries are planned ahead of time, using the forms and palette from a drawing to guide the work. Other pieces are just a flurry of whatever colors are around the studio at that time. For each piece I pick a particular palette, and then try to stay within that system. I like to surprise myself with color combinations and see how nasty or tight they can get. My new works are really open, a barrage of color. They are kind of nauseating.

I think my whole process is about disruption. Once something starts to work in terms of composition and form, I challenge it or take it apart. It's a constant back and forth. With "Grey Peak, then fall" I specifically chose a muted, dreary palette. I wasn’t trying to make an image, but it started to go that way so I nudged the composition in that direction. That piece is particularly dense. I really wanted to play with a kind of aggressive relief.

DG: I enjoyed seeing your drawings at the gallery. They reminded me of the scribble-drawings that toddlers make, and I wonder if you are pulling from that infantile place that also interested artists like Jean Dubuffet?

MA: Definitely. The drawings could be thought of as proposals for unrealized forms or situations. Some are funny, some are off kilter, some are just sad. They amplify the intuitive flavor of the sculptures.

The word "infantile" suggests something raw, instantaneous, and clumsy. It never made sense to me to tidy up a sculpture or a drawing, or worry about whether or not something can stand on its own. My work is on a spectrum where on one end you have completion, and on the other end, a big mess. The work gives form to multiple ideas about motivation and skill.

Of course Jean Dubuffet is an influence, as are countless other artists both trained and untrained, that deal with materiality, expression, and eroticism.

DG: Eroticism - I hadn't gotten that from your work initially. How does eroticism find its way into your work?

MA: One of the things I love about work by some untrained artists, and other people who make things but don't identify as artists, is the way that desire is sublimated into physical forms. The frenetic use of materials by these people often gives shape to their anxieties about their own conflicted sexuality. You can really feel it when you are around work of this nature. The materials I use already come pre-packaged with associations of gender and sexuality, so I try to muck up those associations in order to create something unclassifiable, something queer.

DG: Your work definitely succeeds in making a mess of preconceptions about tapestry, sculpture, painting, gender, and sexuality, which generates an implicit politics to your practice. Do you think explicitly about a kind of politics in your art?

MA: I was in undergrad in the 90’s, and I was very intimidated by the debates about gender and identity in visual art. I was so immersed in reading theory that I would talk myself out of making anything, or exploring anything through materials. It has taken me a long time to figure out a way to embed these kinds of issues into forms without being direct or illustrative of a particular dogma.

I think my work embodies a refusal to tidy up ideas or political positions, but doesn’t ignore them. I like having multiple associations. The tired binary oppositions of high vs. low, male vs. female, craft vs. art aren’t particularly juicy any more. Not to say they aren’t still highly charged conversations, but I would like to enter those debates from a different angle.

Interview by Daniel Gerwin

Images: Installation view, Pretty Good and Grey Peak, Then Fall

Installation view, Oooh That Smell