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| Beer's Studio, 2013 |
One day earlier this summer, we sat down with Jonathan Beer (MFA 2012, Fellows 2013) to talk a little about his work, the Academy Fellowship, and what he's looking forward to as the Fellowship year concludes.
New York Academy of Art: Tell me about where you’re from.
Jon Beer: I am 25
years old. I am from New Orleans, although I was only there two years. I grew
up upstate, right outside Albany. Grew up in suburbs but on the edge of
development in the woods. We were tucked back behind the rest of the streets with
¼ acre of woods around us. We were outdoors a lot and I think that has a lot to
do with my work, at least how my interest developed. I also spent a lot of time
in the Adirondacks on a small lake
Academy: You spent
summers there?
Beer: And spent
winters taught skiing there. We have
little cabin there. That was a profound
visual experience. A pristine
overwhelming visually and spatially overwhelming environment. The lake was in a
valley surrounded by mountains. It just took hold in my work. As a kid I was
really into comics and up until high school I thought that was what I was going
to do – draw comic books, then senior year rolled around and I had to decide if
I wanted to do this, cartooning, or illustration, School of Visual Arts (SVA)
and I decided illustration and the comic book thing just faded away.
Academy: So your
choice was illustration or cartooning?
Beer: Well, they are
the same department. the two are bundled together. I think SVA is one of the
few that has that. They are really the
magnet for that sort of thing. I
realized that really wasn’t what I wanted to do. In high school I had started to really
paint. I realized I was much more vested
in images than in stories. I wasn’t a
great storyteller. I wasn’t a great
writer either for a long time, I think. So, I realized I had this like investment in
images in undergrad.
Academy: As a kid
you were interested in comic books and what other kinds of things were you
interested in?
Beer: All sorts,
I guess. The thing that dominated my
life was Legos and I would just build these huge worlds. I guess it wasn’t about storytelling; it was
about creating this whole worlds. I
would make them enormous and I would never take them apart. I had two desks in my room. They were this long. They were this interconnected big world.
Academy: Did you
buy the sets and put them together according to the plan?
Beer: Yeah, and then I would take them apart and coddle everything together so it just got like crazy and they are still in my parents’ basement. I was really attached to that process.
Beer: Yeah, and then I would take them apart and coddle everything together so it just got like crazy and they are still in my parents’ basement. I was really attached to that process.
Academy: When you
were little what did you want to be?
Beer: I think I
knew I was going to be an artist. I was
drawing since I was three. There wasn’t really any clear choice for anything
else. At some point when I was little I
think I wanted to be an archaeologist, but I didn’t really care about
archaeology. I just liked the idea of
it. The idea of digging shit up, but the
idea of having to be precise and have to record stuff was totally awful. I just wanted to dig stuff up.
Academy: In high
school you took all the art classes? Did
your high school have a good art department?
Beer: There were
a couple of good art teachers. The
program was kind of like DIY. We didn’t
have AP Art or anything like that. I did
the same studio art class for two years and they just kind of let me do what I
wanted. And that was when I made my
first paintings.
Academy: And what
kind of painting as a high schooler? Assigned projects?
Beer: When I
started to work on my own they became, I got totally sucked into the West Coast
Pop-Surrealism, Shepard Fairey thing.
So, they were really like political, or
like socially aware, illustration-y paintings and this interest in nature and
all that and throughout my life I’ve always read National Geographic. It was satisfying my archaeology thing without
having to go anywhere. So that was a big
part of, I started to get concerned about stuff in the world and the paintings
became about that and they began to involve like a kind of graffiti language
and at the same time I started to make T-shirts so there was a lot of silk
screen and I started to get into design and I worked at a couple of design
places.
Academy: How did
you get into silkscreen? Did you work at
a silkscreen place?
Beer: No, I did
it all in my bathroom.
Academy: Did you
sell them?
Beer: Yes, I started a business doing it for four years. As I started to paint, this design thing grew in parallel with it. The graphic design on the computer for the T-shirts all of that got wrapped in with the painting in a weird way and they kind of fed off each other for a while.
Academy: I think
people think of you as well read and maybe in comparison to others.
Beer: Well, maybe
not as much as I’d like to be.
Academy: Have you
always been that way? I don’t think every art student in high school is aware
of what is going on on the other coast.
Beer: I’ve always
been a great reader, but I don’t think I was until my 3rd or 4th
year at SVA did I start reading about Art. I only started to read about theory
because I knew I was going to grad school and I hadn’t gotten any of that in
the illustration department. Yeah, I’d always been interested in a couple of
artists. But not until college did I start to dive in.
Academy: Did you
have a favorite artist as a high schooler or early college? Who?
Beer: Shepard Fairey, Mark Ryden,
Jeff Soto was really big. Now I just kind of avoid all
that stuff.
Academy: Why?
Beer: Well,
because it kind of it was just really hard to get over. I think every artist in
their trajectory has a couple of big humps they have to get over. For me it was
the West Coast art and it took a teacher at SVA to tell me that my work looked
like taco stand art for me to be done with it. And he said, “I know this is really going to
suck but I am doing you a big favor. I think your stuff looks like taco stand
art and I think you should get over it and make something that is yours.” And
it was good advice and for six months I was really lost and my ideas about
nature and understanding the world.
I also found a lot of inspiration at that time from National
Geographic. It’s so full of schematics. These cross sections show how the world works.
Academy: What do
you mean?
Beer: Well there
will be an article about volcanoes and they will have cross sections of it and
you see all the layers and I LOVE that. And that was where my ideas really
started and what I returned to. It was that kind of aesthetic and it was that
connection with my own experiences in nature and my awe with that. Breaking down the world. Visually breaking it
down.
Academy: Why did
you go to SVA?
Beer: Because of
the comic book illustration thing. I wanted to be in New York. I had an opportunity to go to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). My dad really wanted me to go there.
It had a better reputation. I wanted to be in New York and knew it had a
better reputation as an art center. More
than Providence.
Academy: Had you
been here before?
Beer: On and off,
just visiting.
Academy: So, you
came to SVA and got that good advice from your professor?
Beer: And I took
a lot of Humanities classes. SVA is
really big on that. It’s 30% of your curriculum, of your credits. I ate it up. I ended up with a bunch of extra humanities
credits. There was one teacher; I took
every class that she offered. She’s a
curator and a writer. Her name is Lynn Gamwell
and the first class I took with her was called Exploring the Invisible. It
was the history of science and the history of art in tandem, and that’s the
name of the book. I got that advice from
the teacher, I took that class and everything just exploded all at once. And I
knew where my direction was going. Interest
in the mind, interest in the landscape and interest in how we create this
experience and how the mind creates memory and all of that was filtered through
the landscape where I grew up. It was my
memory. And so, her classes and that
advice shot me straight where I needed to go. And I couldn’t draw fast enough and I started
to paint. That was the second year as an
undergrad.
I had also realized that illustration wasn’t for me. I wasn’t clever enough to be a New York
illustrator. The sense of humor thing
wasn’t me. I’m not pun-y enough. I just
couldn’t deliver.
Academy: Talk
about how you use the idea of memory. Taking things, images, colors, or things
that stick in your head. Elaborate on
what you mean by how your brain creates experiences or how you experience the
work.
Beer: When you
just look at the world. You look at the inside of this shop. Everything you see
you understand that it is three dimensional, right? But as you look at it and your brain understands
it, it’s translated from three dimensions into two. So there is this special understanding that
happens even from a two-dimensional image.
I am interested in reversing that process and creating a spatial
experience on something two-dimensional.
In the hope that two-dimensional image can create something
experiential. What’s amazing about how
our minds work is that we can be totally conscious and in the present
moment. For example right now we’re
having this conversation but at the same time I am remembering all the stuff
you’re asking me about and I am visualizing a lot of it. That is a really strange overlap, between
interior visual experience and exterior visual experience. If you can translate the three-dimensional
outside world to a two-dimensional surface why can’t you translate both inner
and outer world to a two-dimensional experience.
Academy: You’re
paintings attempt to do that inner and outer experiences, incorporating
elements of memory? Lots of people have said you appropriate lots of different
references, both personal and otherwise.
When you’re making your paintings now, what are some of the references
that you’re inspired by? What other things are you appropriating? How conscious are you of that?
Beer: It’s definitely
not unconscious. If I have a tendency to
be anything, it’s self-conscious. You
can ask Wade [Wade Schuman, Faculty]. That was his favorite thing to say.
Academy: Does
that annoy you?
Beer: It probably
still does but I feel less self-conscious now.
Academy: So he
was encouraging you to be more…?
Beer: Intuitive. I feel like I am getting to that place, of
being more intuitive. Especially as I
start to use more materials. It allows
for an easier intuitive process. For
example, if I want to make the sensation of something plastic-y, why not just
use plastic? It took me seven years to
figure that out. But it happened and
it’s helping. As far as sources go, I
think this whole journey has been a really broad act of clarifying. As I started way back trying to understand the
world, my world, and my place in it through my memories and my experiences and
recreating them on the canvas I started to delve deeper into what my experience
is and what my identity is. I feel like
my identity is tied to landscape a lot.
But it’s tied to an American landscape and so that opened up a whole
avenue of “what is American-ness?” How do I fit in American-ness? How do I fit
into Masculine American-ness? What are the symbols that direct that for this
population?
Academy: What
made you conscious of that? Did you
leave the country? How did you start to recognize your American-ness?
Beer: It was
being in Leipzig. I have travelled a
lot. But it really didn’t happen until
then. I am half Romanian. I am first generation American. My dad came to the states in the 1970s. That has had a huge impact on my work and the
kind of searching, that clarifying act.
The landscape of Romania is very similar to the landscape of the
Adirondacks. Those two conflations of
memory, a memory that is not my own and a present experience that is mine that
also have melded together. So my act of
recreating that landscape that I didn’t know.
Academy: Have you been back?
Beer: I was born
here, but I have been twice. Then I went
to Leipzig and everything, all of a sudden, oh, I am actual very American. I remember writing while I was there that I
realized I was much more American in ways I had never anticipated.
Academy: How so?
Beer: There is a
lot of idealism in America. The American
Dream is still alive. It’s alive in the
personalities of the people here. That’s
a very interesting strange thing.
There’s this optimism, this hope that’s been around from when the
pilgrims left England because they were looking for a better place. It’s in the
DNA of what it is to be American. That idealism was there. Again there is this whole other connection
point to what the American landscape means and how it has been represented
throughout history. Like the Hudson River School, which were big influences of
mine. I became aware of the subtle
differences in design and color between Europe and America. And I became really interested in that
again.
Academy: Can you
describe that?
Beer: Eastern
Germany is this left over socialist DDR republic. It’s very East still. You feel it in the air. It’s only been 24 years. When you go on the train in Berlin, the color
of the seats and the fabric pattern is red, blue, white, and brown. It’s slightly dated and it has it’s own charm
but it’s subtle. In America, especially
being at school in Tribeca, walking through Chinatown it’s brazen, bright
colors, fluorescence, neon. Where as,
you look at something like this where it’s trying to be European, very
sensitive Yellow. There’s
tasteful-ness. What I came to realize,
is I love the cheesiness and the unabashed, ideal optimistic palette of
America.
Academy: It’s
also commercialism and advertising.
We’ve tested this red and know it makes you feel hungry.
Beer: Right. So America is also about that. That color says a lot. I became very interested in that. In using that color and those kind of formal
properties to frame my work. Abstract
painting, non-objective abstract painting from the 1960s and 1970s was all
about feelings and communicating a certain kind of energy or state of
being. So color became emotionally
directed. I would say mine is also, but
I would also say that I am interested in color being a reference point for
talking about a certain time, creating an association.
For me, it’s important but not important enough for me to be
like this is what this is and this is how you need to feel about it. I hate the word signifier, but it is a
signifier.
Academy: I want
to backtrack and ask why you went to the Academy and not SVA?
Beer: When I
really started to do painting in undergrad at SVA, the paintings were literally
big schematic paintings of landscapes coming apart, as if they were made of
different layers. They are the
Architecture of the Mind series on my website.
In undergrad, all these things came together. Along the road I had
discovered JP Roy [Jean-Pierre Roy MFA 2001, Fellow 2002]
and he became a big influence. He was actually
the first studio visit I ever did in New York.
I brought was my then biggest and best painting, it was about 48 inches
wide. I carried it all the way to his
studio, it was a panel. I got it there
and was so excited. I brought it in and he said “Ok, just put it over
there.” At the time he was working on a
20-something foot painting. I put it
down next to it and thought well that’s a tiny-ass painting.
Academy: You did
that studio visit before you were a student?
You just contacted him?
Beer: Yes. My senior year at SVA was when I went to
visit him. SVA is split all over the place on 23rd Street and all
around. It’s really hard to have a sense
of community when a school is like that. Part of the reason I came to the Academy was
community. I had gone to some of the
lectures before I enrolled. Sitting in
the back, I already felt like I was a student.
Which was incredible.
Academy: How so?
Beer: The
discussion was so rich and engaged. The
lecture was part of the Art & Culture Lecture Series,
the free lectures the school hosts. It
was great. It was incredible. I had never felt that at SVA. I believe the lecture was by the author of a
book about Michelangelo. I don’t
remember who it was. I had gone to the
lecture, felt really connected. My
paintings were pretty tight at that point.
Very articulated. They were
traditional in the sense of building it up and blocking stuff in. They were very done in a traditional painting
process. I was interested in knowing all
about that. I applied to all the big
schools, including Yale and Columbia. I
was accepted to the Academy and the School of Visual Art in Boston. After visiting, I didn’t like the program in
Boston, too much Video art for me. So I
came to the Academy. I knew New York. I had gotten to know the community a
bit. I knew JP at that point.
Academy: Why did
you want to go to grad school? Not
everyone does.
Beer: It’s
actually rare to go straight to grad school.
A lot of people take a year or two off.
Academy: You didn’t
want to drift around a bit?
Beer: No, I was
excited about my ideas. I was really
working a lot and painting a lot. I wanted to keep this going. I also knew I wanted to teach, too. I have known for a long time that I wanted to
teach. I knew I needed my MFA to do
that. So I came here.
Academy: Could
you tell me about an influential critique or class you had at the Academy?
Beer: I remember
first year. I was taking JJ’s [John Jacobsmeyer, Faculty] Comp & Design
class.
Academy: That’s
one of the early classes you take at the Academy, right?
Beer: Yes, you
take Comp & Design I first semester of your first year. I took JJ’s class. He was great.
We had this big project, end of semester project. We had to make a large painting based on some
of the traditional design principals we had talked about. The summer before the Academy and up through
that semester, my work had become very sparse and very geometric. Very architectural. It was the same idea of memories coming apart. But it had switched from an exterior natural
world to an interior one. Very specific
memories of my own. I started to work
with shaped canvases. Irregular shapes,
specific to a drawing. I decided I was going to make this crazy complicated
painting with 13 different sides. It was
big, 70 inches long, and a ridiculous shape.
It took me three days to build it.
I was really excited about it and really proud of it. I brought it into the critique and I went
first.
Academy: What
style critique was it? In front of the
class? Individual? You had had a few
critiques before this one, correct?
Beer: It was just
with our Comp & Design class. Yes, I
had participated in a few crits before.
We have less in illustration. So, I put it up there. JJ looked at it and I talked about it a
little bit. He said, “I really like your
ideas, but you just need to learn how to paint better.” I was first and that was it, the crit was
over. He went onto the next person. He’s very even keeled; he just says it how it
is. He was right.
Academy: Was what
he said crushing?
Beer: Yes. But it was very motivating. I had had a similar experience in
undergrad. But that experience with JJ
was always very memorable (laughs). I
had some great crits with Catherine [Catherine Howe, Faculty]. I became very close with her. I think she always pushed me. She knew from the beginning how to push my
buttons. She just pushed me and pushed
me and pushed me. I finally got out of
that geometric thing and started to paint again. My second hurdle was Neo Rauch. The first was west-coast stuff. The second was Neo Rauch. Who is Leipzig, Germany based. He’s the best known out of the Leipzig
school. I was obsessed.
Academy: Was this
after you had been to Leipzig?
Beer: No, this
was before. I felt like I had a lot of
kinship with him. With how he painted,
with the ways he broke up the space, and broke up the world and allowed memory,
history, imagination, reality and fantasy to exist all in one picture. He just pulls it off like no one else. It’s really seductive. He’s incredibly talented and prolific. Now I am gushing (laughs). I started to see the world through this “Neo
Rauch filter” and Catherine was on my ass about it. This was a solid year, at least. I remember one day she said to me in a critique,
“You know you’re a responsive painter” and I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You respond to stuff. All this
stuff, your work, is a response. You’re
responding to the ideas of your history and your past.” It changed everything.
Academy: Did you
feel like that was an insult?
Beer: No, not at
all. That was the most eye-opening thing anyone has said to me during my entire
time as a painter. It was that one
phrase. It allowed me to really see how
I relate to my own work and how I related to my ideas. It changed everything. It gave me permission. It’s a really important thing. It’s really hard to give yourself
permission. Permission to let go, to
paint big, to paint small, to paint loose.
Academy: How did
that give you permission?
Beer: It provided
a context for me to see my own work. To
see how I wanted to be involved in my own ideas. Instead of trying to depict landscape from
Romania that I don’t know and simultaneously the interior of a room from my
childhood that sounds very formulaic and boring. But if I am responding to that idea, than I
now have permission to change it. It
becomes my response. I can change the
palette. How do you respond to that
feeling or searching? How is that
expressed rather than depicted? Response
was this big word that just opened up.
It was the key to the city.
Academy: When was
that?
Beer: That was
the end of first year, I think. Or the
end of first semester during my second year.
It was at a pivotal moment.
Academy: How did
your work change throughout your time at the Academy?
Beer: So my work
started off really tight, as a described in a really traditional process. And it became much more sparse. I started to eliminate more and more elements. I would eliminate the background. There was a lot of white space and everything
became very clean and sharp, which Catherine hated. Eventually as that series
ended, I was left scrambling. I started to do these paintings that combine
interiors and exteriors, within a traditional rectangular format. No more crazy shaped canvases. I tried to throw everything back together
with the tools I now had, in more of an expressionistic shorthand that I was
picking up. I started to feel my natural
rhythm for how I wanted to paint. It was not tight. It was loose.
It was more a shorthand for what I was imagining I was perceiving rather
than an articulated one. I wouldn’t necessarily
paint…I’m trying to think of an example.
This ceiling is kind of gold and there is some orange. In the beginning, I would have painted every
little piece going back but then I would have painted one big swath of gold and
just dot the lights in. My painting
style became a lot looser. Then the Neo Rauch thing happened. He was such a strong example of what I was
trying to do and I just fell right in.
Academy: Tell me
about the Fellowship and how that has been.
Beer: It’s been a
great opportunity. I have never been
this excited about what I am making and have never felt this free to make
it. The reason the Fellowship has been
so great is really because of Leipzig.
The fact that I got over this Neo Rauch thing second year, finally felt
comfortable and had my own direction. I
had made the biggest painting I had ever made and I left New York that summer
with the show booked in September. I was
going to Leipzig. I was going to
confront all these ghosts that I thought I was over. I was going into the belly of the beast. I left New York essentially without a
history. I didn’t take anything with
me. I got there and started fresh. I had never felt that panicked before about
having to actually recall what I was interested in making paintings about.
Academy: Why did
you feel that way?
Beer: Because I
was in a new setting. I had to set up a
studio somewhere else. This was my first
time with a big studio. The first time having a show. The first time I was really feeling like I
was starting my real art life and able to make what I wanted. It was a really great editing process. All the baggage and self-consciousness that I
had here, felt like it was gone. That
which happens in grad school with so many voices giving feedback and around
you. I was able to really meditate on
what I was interested in and what my ideas were. The erroneous stuff just disappeared. That was great. It was amazing. I never expected that. I actually had no idea
what to expect with a residency, but it was unbelievable and magical.
Academy: When you
came back and started the Fellowship did you continue the trajectory you had started
on your residency?
Beer: I think
so. All the paintings I did for the show
in September were large. I finally felt
comfortable working on a large scale and I knew that was part of what I wanted
to do this year. I had really found a
way to take apart the world that was the world that I experienced in the
present and the world I remember as my own memories and a past that I had
learned that was not my own. The
American Identity thing came in at the moment.
My focus on identity shifted to my American Identity and to
understanding how American Identity for the nation was formed through
exploration, through painting and how it was represented and things like the
World’s Fair became really involved in my work.
Symbols for America came into my work.
I began to take apart the American flag, the colors, American
Iconography and American advertising.
Everything I have been really involved in throughout my whole life but
never had the perspective to see. That
gift is really been amazing. I don’t
know if that would have really happened had I not been able to step away
through the experiences I was given. The
Charlie Brown thing happened in Leipzig.
Academy: What’s
the Charlie Brown thing?
Beer: Ah, I guess
the Charlie Brown thing was probably pretty pivotal. I was doing all these paintings at the end of
second year that had chevrons in them.
One day I was drawing them and instead of making them all go the same
direction, I made one go the other way and then connected it again. I realized it was the design on Charlie
Brown’s shirt. So I put it into a
painting. That symbol opened up this
design iconography into a painting language.
Why can’t it be a serious formal element in a non-abstract painting? But it’s just Charlie Brown. With that I found a way to co-opt a design
language that I have been trained to do well but I also appreciate. I also experience those design elements in
the world every day. Doing that allowed
me to find a bit of a sense of humor in my work. Which was really an important thing for me,
which I hadn’t recognized yet. What I
couldn’t do in writing I finally found a way to do it in painting. It was really satisfying to get a taste of
that in my work. It was humor through
paradox. I began to see all these
paradoxes in American culture.
Academy: As an
artist, do you find yourself naturally observing?
Beer: Yes. I am always looking. A real nugget like is more rare. But I definitely look for those. I also keep a running list of titles.
Academy: You get
your titles from what you see? Are titles important to you?
Beer: Yes, I
do. Titles are really important. One of the paintings in the Fellows show
called “Castle Bravo.” It’s named after
a nuclear test during one of the American operations during the Cold War. I was watching this documentary about World
War II and post WWII because I think that time period is a really interesting
time in America. A lot of
crystallization of America happened then.
Our generation has inherited America in that way. I find that really interesting and the
historical footage is tremendously interesting.
I was watching it and they showed footage of cleaning up this bombsite. There were these huge strapping GIs riding
around on tanks without shirts on in the tropics. The tanks are all covered in this yellow and
red chevron tarp, as if that’s going to protect them from the biggest nuclear
bomb to ever be detonated. There’s so
much ridiculousness layered in this history.
I wanted to capture that moment, that innocence and earnestness that is
so important to America. Suspension of
belief is really important
Academy: What do
you mean "suspension of belief"?
Beer: The
American Dream. People came and just
died by they troves believing they were going to find a city of gold, the Northwest
Passage.
Academy: You mean
believing despite evidence to the contrary?
Beer: Yes. Which
is paradoxical. It’s kind of crazy and kind of amazing. I am really drawn to the way America exudes
that from its pores. It’s just
there. I like finding those
moments. So “Castle Bravo” was
that. Titles are really important to
me. A lot of time I have them written
down and don’t know where they’re going.
I don’t know which works they’ll attach themselves to.
Academy: You
don’t have figures in your work. How was
the figurative education from the Academy influential?
Beer: There’s a great tradition of learning all
of that. For one, you can’t get it
anywhere else. For someone, like me, who is after knowledge and interested in
teaching those skills are really important.
I think it’s an important foundation to have, to be able to visualize
and dissect your world in three-dimensions.
It’s a difficult skill to learn, but really being able to focus and hone
that skill has been really important. I
start teaching at Montclair University this fall, teaching Painting I. I’ll be able to communicate those skills
better and help other artists, to show them what they can do. Most people have the ability to deconstruct
and construct, they just have to learn that they have it.
Academy: Tell me
about Art Rated.
Beer: When I left
SVA, I realized one of the things I wanted from grad school was more critical
dialogue. I love crits. I know some people hate them and hate talking
about their work, but getting into it and taking it all apart. There is nothing more satisfying to me. I really enjoy it. I’ve always really enjoyed having those
conversations. My first year I realized
I always wrote down what I thought about shows I had seen. I started writing
more formally about shows that spoke to me, like the Richard Serra Drawing Show. Growing up I was not a good writer, my sister
was the better writer. I finally found what
I wanted to write about, it wasn’t stories.
It was critical dialogue. Lily
Olive [http://lilykoto.com/] and I became friends here. We started visiting people’s studios and
doing photos and things for the blog here.
We realized we should start our own.
We came up with the title at our first studio visit.
Academy: Who else
do write for?
Beer: The Brooklyn Rail. I’ve done a few pieces for the Huffington Post.
Academy: How did
you get those?
Beer: I was writing for ArtWrit. And they knew the Huffington Post. It was last summer, a piece I wrote about dOCUMENTA (13) for ArtWrit and then Huffington Post picked it up. I’ve also written for Art Observed. I am going to be writing for the Brooklyn Rail again and a blog called Dirty Laundry and some other big things coming up. I love interviews. I’ve done some essays and long form writing, but I really love doing interviews. To get at where someone is coming from and what their work is about, there’s nothing like it. It’s a conversation and makes their work much more accessible. I’ve totally fallen in love with it. I do a studio visit a week.
Academy: Are
artists willing do them?
Beer: Mostly. It can be really hard to be an artist in New
York. Even if you have a network, it’s
really spread out. Having the chance to meet new people regularly and feel
connected to them is great. It makes
struggling in New York as an emerging artist all the more worth it and
enjoyable. It reaffirms why you do this. I keep a running list on my phone of people I
want to meet and visit with. I aim really
high. I ask everyone, I don’t always get
them, but it helps for the future asks.
Academy: Do you
want to stick around New York?
Beer: For sure.
Academy: What do
you have coming up next?
Beer: I have a
few shows this fall. After the Fellows
show opens, I have a show at the Lawrence Gallery at Rosemont College. It’s a solo show, but with three people at
once. It’s called Landscape Revisited. It’s some of my early work from SVA. It’s been shown a few times already, but it
will travel around a bit more. In
October, I have a solo show in New Jersey at Fairleigh Dickinson University. In January, there’s a show at a museum in
Miami, at an art and design center there.
Academy: How do you get shows?
Beer: Through
proposals. You have to know how to
write. The trick is following up. I’ve worked with someone who helps me with
that. I’ve been really lucky to have an
agent who helps me make connections and follow-up with them. It’s important to participate in the art
world. Go to openings, write, and be
introduced. That’s how I got my next
show.
###
For more information about the 2013 Fellows Exhibition featuring Jonathan Beer, Aleah Chapin, and Nicolas Holiber or the Academy's Post-Graduate Fellowship Program visit the New York Academy of Art website - www.nyaa.edu.
This interview was conducted by Maggie Mead on behalf of the New York Academy of Art. Editing and layout was done by Elizabeth B. Hobson, CMP.
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