Kicking off San Diego Art Month, the San Diego Fine Art Society presents the first annual San Diego Fine Art Awards this September.
Providing recognition for new and notable members of the San Diego arts community, Fine Art Awards categories include: Exhibition of the Year at a Museum, Exhibition of the Year at a Gallery, New Artist of the Year, Patron of the Year and People’s Choice.
Nominees for New Artist of the Year include Greg Brotherton, Susy Bielak and Shinpei Takeda. In honor of San Diego Art Month, we sat down with Susy Bielak to learn more about her artistic vision and how it feels to be nominated for such a prestigious award.
Susy Bielak combines fine craft and social questions in breathtaking projects that are inspired by simple realities of everyday life, such as the communal nature of the public bus or the rapport between natural disaster and interior life. Her celebrated Quake/Temblor project evolved out of finding her civil engineer father's photographs of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake's damage intermingled with family photographs in her parents' home. Throughout the project Bielak asks how much control we really have and if we can ever predict disaster in our daily lives. In an attempt to bridge relationships between individuals and communities, much of Susy Bielak’s work also extends to community-based grassroots initiatives, international programs, and ethnographic research. From the very first watercolor painting she ever made to why she loves living in San Diego and her role as Associate Director of Art and Technology at Sixth College at UCSD, get to know Susy Bielak in this week’s San Diego artist spotlight on DiscoverSD.com.
DiscoverSD: How does it feel to be nominated for the Prometheus New Artist of the Year award? Where were you and how did you react when you first found out?
Susy Bielak: I am elated to be nominated for the Prometheus New Artist of the Year award. The day that I found out, I was checking emails and got a mysterious note from the San Diego Fine Art Society inquiring into my artwork. It felt fantastic when I called, and found out that I’d been nominated for the award. It was a wonderful surprise. I’m relatively new to San Diego—I moved here four years ago to pursue an MFA at UCSD after living and working for many years in the Twin Cities. During my time here, I’ve concentrated on producing art. To be nominated for the award is a great honor. It also encourages me to keep pushing the envelope with my work.
DSD: You say that art can provide honesty, perspective and truth. Can you explain?
SB: In my work, I strive to combine fine craft and social questions. My projects emerge from realities of life, ranging from the communal nature of the public bus to the rapport between natural disaster and interior life. Much of my professional and artistic work has revolved around bridging relationships between individuals and communities, ranging from grassroots initiatives, to international programs, to ethnographic research. My interest is in combining the expressive power of material with the potency of social realities—working with each to deepen and intensify the other. The nature of my projects is multifaceted, interdisciplinary, and process-based—joining studio practice, post-studio practice, writing, and social research. For the past twelve years, I've interspersed drawing with printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and video. Form follows concept, and my work often incorporates nontraditional materials (e.g., stickyback vinyl on bus doors, water on opaque plastic) and processes (e.g., town hall meetings, collaborations with structural engineers) in order to best render an idea.
DSD: Your series Quake/Temblor opens up questions about the many contradictions in natural disasters, and relationship between natural disaster and domestic life. The first project in the series engages with the 1985 Earthquake in Mexico City. Can you describe how you came to build a series of works around that event?
SB: Quake/Temblor evolved out of finding earthquakes in my basement—an encounter of my civil engineer father's photographs of structural damage in the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake intermingled with family photographs in my parents' home.
The encounter provoked questions of control and the prediction of disaster in our daily lives. Studying my father’s forensic photographs of this earthquake, I thought about the impossibility of predicting when disaster will strike in our daily lives, the role of corruption in the construction of urban space, and the human hand at play in so-called natural disaster. While there are devices to test the integrity of structural objects, I wondered what kind of scientific test might anticipate damage to interior lives.
With this question in mind, I visited UCSD’s Caltrans Seismic Response Modification Device (SRMD) Test Facility. The setting is surreal, oceanic. For me, it was also uncanny. In this brute, industrial space of science, I first saw massive fields of blue: the same shades from my father’s photographs: cyan, cobalt, Persian, royal. Being in the space compounded my interest in the correlation between scientific testing ground and biographic artifacts. It inspired me to apply the same pressure and motion normally used to test the integrity of structural systems (e.g. bridge bearings, scaled buildings) to domestic objects and situations.
DSD: Along with the seismic shake table, you also use everyday materials to speak to natural disaster. Will you explain why you chose to work with kitchen tables for the project?
SB: I chose a Formica table as a protagonist for the project to address the contradiction implicit in natural disaster, and to transmogrify an everyday object. There have been Formica kitchen tables in each of my family homes—in my grandparents' house in Mexico City, my parents' house in Pittsburgh, my apartment in Minneapolis, and my studio in San Diego. In Quake/Temblor, the Formica table substitutes for the body in a space of scientific testing, and serves as both a canvas and printing block.
Engraving into Formica, in patterns emulating natural forms, speaks to an unsustainable built environment. Formica, with its durable, domestic nature and supposed indestructibility, reveals itself as thin laminate, addressing the precarious relationship between people and nature and the illusions with which we sometimes surround ourselves.
DSD: What is your favorite piece of artwork you’ve created? What is it? Why is it your favorite?
SB: Difficult question. It’s a toss up between Bus Parts, an installation combining bus doors, sticky-back vinyl, and synthetic scents; and the aforementioned kitchen tables and videos from Quake/Temblor. Bus Parts marked the first time I worked seriously with material to create a visceral installation. Quake/Temblor comes even closer to achieving material metaphor.
DSD: What was the very first piece of artwork you ever created? How old were you and what did you make?
SB: The first piece of artwork I ever made was a crayon and watercolor portrait of myself with my mother. My mother has brown eyes and black hair. I have blue eyes, and at the time, had white-blonde hair. In the painting, I drew myself with my eyes and my mother’s hair. I was two and a half.
DSD: Where do you see your career five years from now?
SB: I envision myself as accomplished and still striving. Hopefully, this will involve participation in international exhibitions, inclusion in major museum collections, serving as a mentor to young artists, and staying connected to poetics and politics.
DSD: Who is your favorite San Diego artist? Why?
SB: While this is hard to narrow down, one of them is May Ling Martinez for her vision, humor, and material and emotional intelligence.
DSD: Why do you love living in San Diego? What about San Diego inspires your artistic vision?
SB: Existing between different worlds was one of the things that attracted me to move in San Diego, and is one of the things I love about living here. I've long been engaged with questions of hybrid identity and issues of space. I was born in Mexico City, grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, lived in the Twin Cities, and am now based in San Diego. My father was born to Polish parents in Mexico City, my mother to Russian parents in East LA. My undergraduate thesis was on Mexican American Identity in the Urban Midwest.
Over the past few years, along with the Quake/Temblor project, I’ve concentrated on a community-based project in San Ysidro. Currently, I’m working with some of the San Ysidro charros (rodeo cowboys) on an experimental film that also incorporates UCSD’s state-of-the-art seismic testing devices. There’s no other place where I could make this project. Also, while I moved to San Diego, the catalytic energy in the city is a large part of what keeps me here. Between the Here Not There show at MCASD, There Goes the Neighborhood at the San Diego Museum of Art, and the opening of Space 4 Art, it's a lively moment for art in San Diego, which brings me inspiration.
DSD: When you’re not working, where can we find you in San Diego?
SB: When I’m not in the studio, you can find me at work as the Associate Director of Art and Technology at Sixth College at UCSD, on canyon walks, cooking at home, doing yoga, or exploring the city with friends.
Kicking off San Diego Art Month, the San Diego Fine Art Society presents the first annual San Diego Fine Art Awards to be held at the Contemporary Art Fair on Thursday, September 2, 2010 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. Extending far beyond just the cultural impact of the local artist, the Fine Art Awards celebrate the achievements of individuals, organizations and programs that enrich our community through the arts.
Discover more about the 2010 Fine Art Awards presented by the San Diego Fine Art Society.
