Silence in a field of noise: An artist talk encapsulated
by resident wizard (yes you can book a wizard tarot reader or hypnotist at your event) Devin Person
LA fields a question in A Field of Noise. (From left to right: LA Marks, curator Rebecca Norton, and artists Joshua Johnson, Paula Peatross, and Megan Bickel)
Since 2021, January 6th has become a day of notoriety. But what was formally celebrated as Epiphany, the official “end” of the Christmas holidays according to the Christian calendar, has always been a significant date for us at Ars Poetica, as it marked the birthday of our fearless founder and Chief Poetic Officer, LA Marks. This year, we decided to redirect the date’s infamous energies in a more positive direction, celebrating LA and her values of artistic expression, peaceful revolution, and that burning desire to make the world a better place for everyone, on every side of the political divide. Since LA had recently moved into a new office space for STORYVILLE (the radical, new, story-centered festival coming to Louisville March 22nd!), we decided to combine her birthday, the official office unveiling, and a wonderful artist talk planned for ArtPortal, the gallery just outside Storyville’s office door, into a singular celebration of art and the epiphanies we all experience as we pursue creative expression.
Poems, of course, were typed out in Storyville’s new office alongside a veritable buffet of tasty treats from beloved Louisville bakery, Wiltshire Pantry. (And if you’re wondering about those cool little statues, they are gnomes graciously gifted by the Soveirgnome project!)
While the original plan was to record the talk for posterity and publication through my podcast, This Podcast is a Ritual, an unfortunate technical glitch resulted in the audio being entirely unusable. However, the idea of art being ephemeral versus built to last was one of the many riveting topics LA discussed with the artists, so in this blog post I’ll do my best to recapture the spirit of the event’s discussion, which now primarily lives on in the memories of the attendees’ unique perceptions.
The show, titled Seeded in a Field of Noise, featured the mesmerizing works of Paula Peatross, Gibbs Rounsavall, Megan Bickel, and Joshua Johnson, each contribution selected by ArtPortal’s curator, Rebecca Norton. In the artist talk, Rebecca shared her insights into the artists and their work that led to their inclusion in the show, while LA played a comedic foil, bringing her delightfully rambunctious energy into the room in a careening cascade of questions, ideas, and perhaps the occasional interruption, changing up the pace and adding some heart to what can sometimes become a very heady affair.
As Rebecca explained, in an era where technology and creativity intersect, Seeded in a Field of Noise sought to explore the nuanced processes that artists employ, emphasizing the materiality of their mediums and their engagement with contemporaneity. (Again, interesting themes considering our own audio recording opted to evade materiality entirely.)
Paula Peatross
#4
oil , pearlescent and metallic paint, wax, wood
28.5h x 25.5w x 3d
Paula Peatross, with her distinctive relief paintings, took the traditional picture plane and turned it on its head. The result is a precise interplay of seemingly freewheeling movements, a whirlwind of color and form that invites viewers to experience a continuous journey through the artwork. Like a piece of jazz attuned to its own presence, Peatross's paintings contain a world within them, challenging conventional perspectives.
Gibbs Rounsavall
Transition 7
enamel on paper
12 x 16 inches framed
Gibbs Rounsavall, who was sadly not present for the talk, draws inspiration from music, disassembling light into wavelengths that focus on hue, saturation, and value. His arrangements transform visual elements into beats or steps in time, creating a chromatic ensemble that collectively performs a passage of time brought into vivid shape.
Megan Bickel
All Theories Are Causal: The Coolest Summer of the Rest of Our Lives
2023
Acrylic, Oil, Oil pastel, inkjet print on canvas
22”x 34"
Megan Bickel's paintings, marked by their mesmeric and interruptive consonance, navigate the complexities of meaning. Oscillating between announcement and concealment, Bickel's "unserious fields of imagery" delve into the visual critique of the 2020s and beyond. Her exploration of the ethically fraught relationships between military technologies and paintings challenges our understanding of the intersection between art and the economy.
Joshua Johnson
Dead Hand
2023
acrylic on canvas,
24 x 20 in.
In his artistic practice, Joshua Johnson immerses himself in the process by which artificial intelligence generates images from natural language descriptions or "prompts." Mirroring the generative AI process, Johnson's paintings embody diffusion, noise-making, and re-assembling. His works engage in a dialogue that compares core human achievements, such as language compositionality, natural geometry, and artistic sensibility, against the capabilities of machines, highlighting the common yet distinct relationship between humans and technology.
Artist Paula Peatross answers LA's question.
As the talk found its footing, the experience itself became a catalyst for reflection and appreciation. LA’s energy created a wailing saxophone solo against which both curator and artists could find their own conversational riffs, stepping into the spotlight and then fading back as they staked out their own positions of nodding approval or contrasting as their peers testified to the values expressed in their unqiue explorations of the dynamic interplay between traditional and contemporary artistic processes.
While it’s not unusual to be at loss for words when attempting to describe such an incredible, epiphanic, and, some might say, revolutionary experience, in this case, that loss is sadly literal. However, it’s been said a picture is worth a thousand words, so, in many ways, despite how many commentaries and conversations these pieces might evoke, they ultimately speak for themselves. Art, like typewriter poetry, takes abstract human ideas and emotions and renders them into forms where they can be held, admired, interrogated, and further understood. Thus, like she often does when wrestling an uncertain guest’s topic into a poem that makes them exclaim, “Yes! That’s what I was trying to express,” the experience of this artist talk allowed LA to bridge the gap between brainy philosophical concepts and heart-centered emotional authenticity in a way that helped us celebrate not only the birth of LA Marks, but the birth of the possible worlds that might be if we listen, create, and talk in new ways.
- Devin Person, wizard-at-large
