 | | | ARTELLAGRAM 7-17-09:
"In the Studio"
An Interview with Artist cj Madigan (This interview is continued from the July 17 2009 Artellagram...)
 Artella: When did you start working with book arts? How did this inspiration begin?
cj: When I first moved to Florida in 1994 I signed up for a weekend class at our art museum which sounded to me like scrapbooking [although this was years before the scrapbook mania hit the scene.] I found myself surrounded by over a dozen of the most creative artists in the community and was overwhelmed and intimidated by the energy and ideas they had about what a book might be. But since the workshop ran three days, I stayed with it and found the artists very generous and non-judgmental.
Because I had no background in art whatsoever, I asked one of the artists if she could tutor me in how to use the various media. This artist also taught mixed-media classes in her studio and, later that summer, got a printing press, so I started to really enjoy printmaking.
One of the artists in that initial class was back in school finishing her bachelor’s degree at Goddard College. Goddard has a totally student-directed curriculum. I didn’t really understand much about it, but was fascinated. So eventually I applied to Goddard to do my master’s degree, which culminated in my book Behind the Studio Door.
Artella: If you were not limited by anything (i.e., time, money, supplies, location), what kind of art would you be creating right now? Is there some kind of technique or media that you've never done before that you've always wanted to try?
cj: I have always loved old photos — particularly those 3” square Kodacolor snapshots prevalent in the 60s and 70s — and I recently discovered there’s a name for that: vernacular photography. So I would love to do more with these photos — both digitally and tangibly — making books and collages, altering the image, and making up stories to go with the image.
I’m fascinated with the possibilities of on-demand digital publishing. Just a few years ago, if you wanted to get a full-color, hardcover book published, you would have to order several hundred books at a minimum at a cost of thousands of dollars. Now I can combine words and images, control the entire graphic design process, and send the files off to a service and a book is delivered to my door in a week or so.
So I really want to explore the possibilities of bookmaking/private publishing using both hand-crafted and digital output techniques.
Artella: Is it important to be in a good mood when you’re creating?
cj: I don’t believe mood has much of anything to do with creating. As a matter of fact, I often turn to art when I’m in a bad mood or frazzled and when I start laying color down on paper or sifting through my magazine clippings and ephemera for an image, I feel my mind settle into a different place. It’s less jangled and, in a sense, “I” am not even there. It’s just the art. After a couple of hours, I feel myself—my ego, my mundane concerns—come back and that signals that it’s time for me to wrap it up. But I leave that session more relaxed and refreshed than when I started.
Artella: What is your background, in terms of artistic training? If you could go back and do anything differently to prepare you for the kind of creative work you do now, would you have made different decisions?
cj: Unlike a lot of other subjects, the only way you learn to make art is by making art. I had no artistic training when I first started making artist’s books and mixed-media collage. I took a lot of classes and workshops at various artist’s studios and our local art museum. I was also part of an artist’s group that met monthly to do projects together and to learn various techniques from one another. I also committed a semester of my master’s program at Goddard College doing studio work, so I had to turn in various art projects every three weeks. So the classes and the artist’s group forced me to make art on a regular basis.
For me personally, I like to have a mastery of certain techniques or media. In that way, I am no longer struggling to figure out how to lay paint or ink down or what adhesives work best; instead, those tools and techniques become second nature and help me express what I want to get out. It’s the equivalent of becoming a good typist so that you are no longer searching for the keys on the keyboard but instead can concentrate on the words you want to get down.
One of the areas I would like to be stronger in is drawing. I am often frustrated by having an idea of something I want to represent in a two-dimensional plane but not being able to successfully execute that idea. I have taken drawing classes two or three times and have learned a few things and, from the beginning of the class to the end, I can see improvement but I haven’t made a serious commitment to drawing practice. So that’s probably my next area of focus so that I can walk around with just pen and paper and capture what I see before me.
Artella: How do you organize your materials? What are you best organizational tips?
cj: I organize my materials continually! And they seem to become disorganized the moment I leave the room. Actually, they become disorganized the moment I take them out of their carefully designated containers and begin to work with them.
However, continually organizing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gives me a chance to handle the materials I have and that gives me new inspirations about how I might use them. Often when I set out to “organize” I lay my hands on a few pieces of paper or objects and that leads me into a new project.
I have lots of containers – some I find at scrapbook supply stores, since I have a lot of 12x12” paper, some I find at the local hardware store – lots of little drawers for small objects. I love the Elfa organizing systems. I got a labeler from the office supply store and that is my best organizing tip – put labels on all your containers so you know what is in them.
I put like things with like: cutting tools, paint brushes, acrylic paints, etc. I have lots of images and words torn from magazines and some of them I keep in file folders, some in plastic boxes and drawers, some I paste up randomly in art journals.
I also love page protectors in three ring binders – they make it easy to flip through lots of paper objects without damaging them. And I like photo storage boxes because they hold a lot of small objects and paper, photos and postcards and stack nicely and have a built in label holder.
I recently got Apple’s Aperture software and have committed to learning how to use that to organize all my digital images.
Artella: Do you actually buy much of other folks’ art, or just use it for inspiration?
cj: An artist I respect a lot made me aware of the fact that it usually doesn’t cost any more to buy original art from local artists than to buy mundane reproductions from a big box store.
For a while I did buy a quite a bit of original art directly from local artists. Probably the most expensive piece of art I’ve purchased so far was $2,000. Recently I haven’t had the discretionary funds to invest in any significant pieces, but I still try to buy photographs, prints or even cards directly from artists in town or at art fairs and I have started buying small pieces of original art as “special occasion” gifts for weddings, birthdays, etc. And, of course, I’m a sucker for all the great books that are out now about collage, book arts, mixed media, as well as handmade books & journals, and zines.
So I think it’s important to support one another as much as we can and to spread the idea that buying original art and privately published books is a great thing that anyone can do. I’ve been with Artella for quite a few years, now, and am delighted with how Marney and her team have developed this community and made it a place for artists to gather and support one another.
See cj's wonderful products in The Shoppes of Artella, here.
 Want more artist interviews from Artella? Take a look at our eBooks Artist Profiles Assembled and Artist Profiles Assembled, Vol 2, and look at the "Ask the Artist" column every single day in The Artella Daily Muse, our daily online creativity newspaper.
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