Duets: student and artist-mentor exchanges<\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div>\nOne of the two main components of a student\u2019s course of study in the MFA-VA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts is a semester-long studio project in which the student develops and\/or challenges specific aspects of their art practice under the guidance of an Artist-Mentor.<\/em><\/p>\nThe VCFA Artist-Mentor network is comprised of prominent contemporary artists who mentor students individually, during the semester. With over 1500 Artist-Mentors across the United States and Canada, VCFA students are ensured mentorship with a different Artist-Mentor each semester.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nStudent:<\/strong> Nadia Martinez (W 22)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nArtist-Mentor:\u00a0<\/b>Doug Ashford<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\nEd. note: The following interview was conducted in November 2020 during Nadia’s 2nd semester in the VA Program – she is currently in her 3rd semester. <\/em>Doug Ashford was Nadia Martinez’s 2nd semester artist-mentor. He is part of the founding faculty of the Visual Art Program at VCFA.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nNadia Martinez <\/a><\/strong>Last semester, I explored the idea of balance and imbalance as something we want to achieve as a society and on a personal level. My work focuses on the connections and relationships that we create with each other and our conditions, often reflecting on the things that are happening at the moment of its creation. Last semester, I thought it was appropriate to do that with the medium as well. I decided to change my approach and incorporate video to reflect on the virtual setting imposed by the pandemic. My main material was cotton.<\/em><\/p>\nStudio Project Title: Perfect Imbalance<\/em><\/p>\nVisual Culture Project Title: Beyond Language<\/em><\/p>\n@imartineza<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nDoug Ashford<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>is a teacher, artist, and writer. He is Professor at The Cooper Union, where he has taught since 1989. His principal practice from 1982 to 1996 was as a member of the artists collaborative Group Material<\/a>. A collection of his work,\u00a0Writings and Interviews\u00a0was published by Mousse Publishing and Grazer Kunstverein in 2013.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div>\nWhat is the structure of your exchanges?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: I think we go with the flow pretty much. There is a little bit of a structure, because we do exchanges of emails and images and Doug has sent me a lot of things to read and names of artists to research. Sometimes when we meet, we actually start with whatever was shared.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nD<\/strong>: With Nadia, in particular, I found it extremely both challenging and rewarding because her work was so developed in terms of the practical experiences that she had with the concept and material. But even more profoundly, the degree to which she was willing to take her practice to a particular place, which for many of us who are practicing artists, is a difficult thing to do. Any of us could throw the whole thing into a condition of questioning, and when we do that, it\u2019s then difficult to work.<\/p>\nPart of the field of being an artist itself is to question the field. The dentist doesn\u2019t go into his studio and say, \u201cHmm, what is a root canal and why am I doing it?\u201d But the artist has to do that. And Nadia, in the most eloquent and careful method that I have run into for a very long time, will enter the structure of our relationship with those questions, \u201cWhat am I doing and why am I doing it?\u201d And that meant we were able to have an extremely open discussion from the very beginning.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n
<\/div>\nNadia, how have these discussions affected your thinking and process regarding your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: It was very interesting because my Visual Culture investigation is language. All of a sudden, I\u2019m trying to think where I draw a parallel between my Visual Culture work, what my desires or plans for my studio practice are, and also being able to comment on what is going on right now, because a lot of my work is about commenting on those issues. So, when I met Doug for the first time, I was electrified. He was putting so many ideas in front of me. I come from a sculptural background, mostly three-dimensional things, sculptural installations, and so how do I work right now?<\/p>\nSoon we were told we were going to have a virtual residency, so, sculpture now becomes more difficult. I had already done it once during the last virtual residency and knew how difficult it was to show sculpture. There was a lot of conversation between Doug and I in terms of what the object is, what are the meanings? Doug opened a whole new set of ideas to the things that I presented two weeks after our second meeting. I was also trying to think of how to integrate something that is more virtual and that\u2019s when I sent him the first video I made.<\/p>\n
And then everything changed after that.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n
<\/div>Personal Journals, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>Possibilities, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nD:<\/strong> That\u2019s really important. The contingencies of the Pandemic are changing the concepts of how we think about materiality. At first, I think for lots of folks this seemed daunting, particularly for Nadia who is so skilled in the relationship to the histories of material applications to sculpture. For many artists the dilemma of what\u2019s a sculpture online has produced a kind of paralysis.<\/p>\nBut Nadia right away, immediately, seemed to be able to see into the conditions of what it means to do the labor of making. I don\u2019t want to be overly optimistic about the conditions of the pandemic, but it has put us all \u2013 artists, educators, philosophers \u2013 into a place in which we have to reexamine the ethics of what we mean by production.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>Still - from behind the scenes filming Imperfect Balance, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHow have you been challenged this semester?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: I was told that I was going to be challenged in a good way by one of Doug’s old students, so I was actually very excited about it. I think the more challenging thing in the beginning was, \u201cOh my god he is so smart, he is talking about so many things I don\u2019t understand, how do I keep up!?\u201d That was the first thing, and another is, I am very quick at turning things around and going back to my initial ideas \u2013 without being stubborn about it. And so, I was pretty much being constantly challenged every meeting that we had.<\/p>\nDoug has helped me open my horizons in directions I was not expecting. He mentioned Clarice Lispector<\/a>, and to read her book, \u00c1gua Viva<\/em><\/a>. I kept imagining, visualizing things as I read. Her writing just becomes so physical, and they are only words. \u00c1gua Viva<\/em> really opened up a new window, a whole new way of thinking for me.<\/p>\nDoug had assigned me to make 100 videos and to email them to him. I thought, \u201cOh my gosh, that\u2019s a lot!\u201d I had never made videos before! But you know, you challenge me, and I will show up. After the 34th<\/sup> video, I believe, we met and Doug said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you need to make any more videos.\u201d<\/p>\nWhat I didn\u2019t know was I actually needed the break from making videos because I was making at least two videos a day. I took two weeks to do research. Doug had mentioned Richard Serra<\/a>\u2019s videos, especially Hand Catching Lead<\/em><\/a>, 1968. I have probably watched it twenty times now. That led me to Yvonne Rainer<\/a>, the dancer that inspired Serra with her Hand Movie<\/em><\/a>, 1966. Then I went into a spiral of research, consuming images, reading, and thinking, \u201cOk, I\u2019m not making anything\u201d, which was making me feel a little bit bad. I do have the need to make something with my hands, so little by little I was making things just to keep me occupied.<\/p>\nI was concerned because in the beginning I had said I wanted to use language this semester. But then at some point when I was making video, I thought I really don\u2019t like my voice and I really didn\u2019t want to add words to it, so how do I add language? He taught me that language did not need to be spelled out and that I could create language just by the images I was making.<\/p>\n
I have also learned from him to check all spectrums, not just visual art, but literature, even science. I do get inspired by different things, but I think Doug showed me a different way of researching that I will be able to keep doing now.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nHow is it different from what your conception of research had been?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: I think opening up my mind to possibilities for creativity, whether it\u2019s science or literature or psychology, which we have spoken a lot about. How can that actually be implemented into my studio practice to create more interesting conversations? I realized that some of the points I was trying to make were shallow, they didn\u2019t have a lot of roots, so a way of research that we have been talking about will allow me to create stronger roots.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>Stills from Cotton videos, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nCan you describe a pivotal moment that helped shift something for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: I have always liked to be behind the scenes. I make my work and when I have an exhibition I am there, but I don\u2019t really want to be there. I like the work to talk for itself. One of the most difficult things was to actually put myself in front of the camera. I went little by little. I felt safe to do the exercise of making 100 one-minute videos. Everything was an experiment. I saw it as a sketch book. It didn\u2019t matter if I was there or not there. But little by little I was putting myself there. In some of them my whole body, in some of them just my hands.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nWas this at Doug\u2019s suggestion that you use yourself in the videos?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\nN<\/strong>: No. It was organic.\u00a0That had been such a big thing for me because I\u2019m just not comfortable to be \u201cthere\u201d. But I became comfortable being there, maybe because I\u2019m also working with the lighting and it\u2019s all dark. That was definitely one of the moments of, \u201cOh wow, I actually can do this! I\u2019m performing\u201d. I didn\u2019t know I would arrive at that \u2013 at least in this semester. So that was a big thing.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nD:<\/strong> I really sympathized or tried to sympathize with the anxieties of the body in this case, but the capacity with which we have to identify a sense of understanding of each other through the physical nature of our bodies is embodied in the labor of the artist always.<\/p>\nI think Nadia\u2019s body was always there, because of the amazing amount of skill and attention that she was able to train through the body into very complex sculptural and other forms of installation that would always create identifications with her physically.\u00a0 Nadia brought that reality, because of the history of her own practice, to me, so then I had to respond accordingly to say: your body was always there. I mean the depiction of the body is another issue, but the body was always there. For all the audiences, for all the shows she produced, years before she came to VCFA.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div>\nOne of the two main components of a student\u2019s course of study in the MFA-VA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts is a semester-long studio project in which the student develops and\/or challenges specific aspects of their art practice under the guidance of an Artist-Mentor.<\/em><\/p>\n The VCFA Artist-Mentor network is comprised of prominent contemporary artists who mentor students individually, during the semester. With over 1500 Artist-Mentors across the United States and Canada, VCFA students are ensured mentorship with a different Artist-Mentor each semester.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Student:<\/strong> Nadia Martinez (W 22)<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Artist-Mentor:\u00a0<\/b>Doug Ashford<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Ed. note: The following interview was conducted in November 2020 during Nadia’s 2nd semester in the VA Program – she is currently in her 3rd semester. <\/em>Doug Ashford was Nadia Martinez’s 2nd semester artist-mentor. He is part of the founding faculty of the Visual Art Program at VCFA.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Nadia Martinez <\/a><\/strong>Last semester, I explored the idea of balance and imbalance as something we want to achieve as a society and on a personal level. My work focuses on the connections and relationships that we create with each other and our conditions, often reflecting on the things that are happening at the moment of its creation. Last semester, I thought it was appropriate to do that with the medium as well. I decided to change my approach and incorporate video to reflect on the virtual setting imposed by the pandemic. My main material was cotton.<\/em><\/p>\n Studio Project Title: Perfect Imbalance<\/em><\/p>\n Visual Culture Project Title: Beyond Language<\/em><\/p>\n @imartineza<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Doug Ashford<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>is a teacher, artist, and writer. He is Professor at The Cooper Union, where he has taught since 1989. His principal practice from 1982 to 1996 was as a member of the artists collaborative Group Material<\/a>. A collection of his work,\u00a0Writings and Interviews\u00a0was published by Mousse Publishing and Grazer Kunstverein in 2013.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n What is the structure of your exchanges?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: I think we go with the flow pretty much. There is a little bit of a structure, because we do exchanges of emails and images and Doug has sent me a lot of things to read and names of artists to research. Sometimes when we meet, we actually start with whatever was shared.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n D<\/strong>: With Nadia, in particular, I found it extremely both challenging and rewarding because her work was so developed in terms of the practical experiences that she had with the concept and material. But even more profoundly, the degree to which she was willing to take her practice to a particular place, which for many of us who are practicing artists, is a difficult thing to do. Any of us could throw the whole thing into a condition of questioning, and when we do that, it\u2019s then difficult to work.<\/p>\n Part of the field of being an artist itself is to question the field. The dentist doesn\u2019t go into his studio and say, \u201cHmm, what is a root canal and why am I doing it?\u201d But the artist has to do that. And Nadia, in the most eloquent and careful method that I have run into for a very long time, will enter the structure of our relationship with those questions, \u201cWhat am I doing and why am I doing it?\u201d And that meant we were able to have an extremely open discussion from the very beginning.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Nadia, how have these discussions affected your thinking and process regarding your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: It was very interesting because my Visual Culture investigation is language. All of a sudden, I\u2019m trying to think where I draw a parallel between my Visual Culture work, what my desires or plans for my studio practice are, and also being able to comment on what is going on right now, because a lot of my work is about commenting on those issues. So, when I met Doug for the first time, I was electrified. He was putting so many ideas in front of me. I come from a sculptural background, mostly three-dimensional things, sculptural installations, and so how do I work right now?<\/p>\n Soon we were told we were going to have a virtual residency, so, sculpture now becomes more difficult. I had already done it once during the last virtual residency and knew how difficult it was to show sculpture. There was a lot of conversation between Doug and I in terms of what the object is, what are the meanings? Doug opened a whole new set of ideas to the things that I presented two weeks after our second meeting. I was also trying to think of how to integrate something that is more virtual and that\u2019s when I sent him the first video I made.<\/p>\n And then everything changed after that.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n D:<\/strong> That\u2019s really important. The contingencies of the Pandemic are changing the concepts of how we think about materiality. At first, I think for lots of folks this seemed daunting, particularly for Nadia who is so skilled in the relationship to the histories of material applications to sculpture. For many artists the dilemma of what\u2019s a sculpture online has produced a kind of paralysis.<\/p>\n But Nadia right away, immediately, seemed to be able to see into the conditions of what it means to do the labor of making. I don\u2019t want to be overly optimistic about the conditions of the pandemic, but it has put us all \u2013 artists, educators, philosophers \u2013 into a place in which we have to reexamine the ethics of what we mean by production.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n How have you been challenged this semester?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: I was told that I was going to be challenged in a good way by one of Doug’s old students, so I was actually very excited about it. I think the more challenging thing in the beginning was, \u201cOh my god he is so smart, he is talking about so many things I don\u2019t understand, how do I keep up!?\u201d That was the first thing, and another is, I am very quick at turning things around and going back to my initial ideas \u2013 without being stubborn about it. And so, I was pretty much being constantly challenged every meeting that we had.<\/p>\n Doug has helped me open my horizons in directions I was not expecting. He mentioned Clarice Lispector<\/a>, and to read her book, \u00c1gua Viva<\/em><\/a>. I kept imagining, visualizing things as I read. Her writing just becomes so physical, and they are only words. \u00c1gua Viva<\/em> really opened up a new window, a whole new way of thinking for me.<\/p>\n Doug had assigned me to make 100 videos and to email them to him. I thought, \u201cOh my gosh, that\u2019s a lot!\u201d I had never made videos before! But you know, you challenge me, and I will show up. After the 34th<\/sup> video, I believe, we met and Doug said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you need to make any more videos.\u201d<\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t know was I actually needed the break from making videos because I was making at least two videos a day. I took two weeks to do research. Doug had mentioned Richard Serra<\/a>\u2019s videos, especially Hand Catching Lead<\/em><\/a>, 1968. I have probably watched it twenty times now. That led me to Yvonne Rainer<\/a>, the dancer that inspired Serra with her Hand Movie<\/em><\/a>, 1966. Then I went into a spiral of research, consuming images, reading, and thinking, \u201cOk, I\u2019m not making anything\u201d, which was making me feel a little bit bad. I do have the need to make something with my hands, so little by little I was making things just to keep me occupied.<\/p>\n I was concerned because in the beginning I had said I wanted to use language this semester. But then at some point when I was making video, I thought I really don\u2019t like my voice and I really didn\u2019t want to add words to it, so how do I add language? He taught me that language did not need to be spelled out and that I could create language just by the images I was making.<\/p>\n I have also learned from him to check all spectrums, not just visual art, but literature, even science. I do get inspired by different things, but I think Doug showed me a different way of researching that I will be able to keep doing now.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n How is it different from what your conception of research had been?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: I think opening up my mind to possibilities for creativity, whether it\u2019s science or literature or psychology, which we have spoken a lot about. How can that actually be implemented into my studio practice to create more interesting conversations? I realized that some of the points I was trying to make were shallow, they didn\u2019t have a lot of roots, so a way of research that we have been talking about will allow me to create stronger roots.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Can you describe a pivotal moment that helped shift something for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: I have always liked to be behind the scenes. I make my work and when I have an exhibition I am there, but I don\u2019t really want to be there. I like the work to talk for itself. One of the most difficult things was to actually put myself in front of the camera. I went little by little. I felt safe to do the exercise of making 100 one-minute videos. Everything was an experiment. I saw it as a sketch book. It didn\u2019t matter if I was there or not there. But little by little I was putting myself there. In some of them my whole body, in some of them just my hands.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n Was this at Doug\u2019s suggestion that you use yourself in the videos?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n N<\/strong>: No. It was organic.\u00a0That had been such a big thing for me because I\u2019m just not comfortable to be \u201cthere\u201d. But I became comfortable being there, maybe because I\u2019m also working with the lighting and it\u2019s all dark. That was definitely one of the moments of, \u201cOh wow, I actually can do this! I\u2019m performing\u201d. I didn\u2019t know I would arrive at that \u2013 at least in this semester. So that was a big thing.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n D:<\/strong> I really sympathized or tried to sympathize with the anxieties of the body in this case, but the capacity with which we have to identify a sense of understanding of each other through the physical nature of our bodies is embodied in the labor of the artist always.<\/p>\n I think Nadia\u2019s body was always there, because of the amazing amount of skill and attention that she was able to train through the body into very complex sculptural and other forms of installation that would always create identifications with her physically.\u00a0 Nadia brought that reality, because of the history of her own practice, to me, so then I had to respond accordingly to say: your body was always there. I mean the depiction of the body is another issue, but the body was always there. For all the audiences, for all the shows she produced, years before she came to VCFA.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>Personal Journals, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>Possibilities, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>Still - from behind the scenes filming Imperfect Balance, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>Stills from Cotton videos, Nadia Martinez, 2021<\/small><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n