Studios
Appropriated Artist
Ginny Riddle interview
2004 November
Ginny Riddle: When I came to your studio there was a note on the door: "don't come back til you're fabulous". Someone had written on it "but Derek, I AM fabulous".
Derek Parks: I was locked up... keeping a day schedule.
GR: In this new work, rather than supporting the idea that art is timeless or open to interpretation, you're extremely specific about time and place- not at all interested in lamenting the past or democratized aesthetics.
DP: Well the best thing about good art is seeing things or societies or relationships as they are at very specific points. These things are timeless by default, so time-stamps are important to me. I'm only interested in the next question. I really respect the question more than someone trying to force a response.
GR: You think about creative mediums as conduits to connecting with whatever society you inhabit...
DP: Not so much about connecting. It's less direct.
GR: Do you think of art as a way then to translate a given society?
DP: My work is how I personally filter information or understand my situation or experience. It's always about shifting perceptions around. It's always about shifting contexts- change one element and every other element changes. It's those fragments that interest me. They can be overwhelming, which makes them great catalysts.
GR: Give me an example: did you realize all the implications of EARTHSKINS as you were working on the collection, or before you began? I heard someone with a german accent, standing in front of Deep Fried Christ explaining that "it only masquerades as a lush landscape, but it conceals everything you don't want to see." The poison under the surface. The surfaces are so touchable before you remember there's no such thing as an unspoiled landscape.
DP:Yeah, It's true. The valley in those paintings is where my grandmother and her mother grew up. I spent ten years restoring the gardens there- we found long, buried stretches of barbed wire fencing and rotting posts, beautiful broken china around old foundations and footprints of the original house... farm residue. It's spectacular on the surface but then there's a town nearby and a chemical factory ten miles away and so many people die from cancer there. I wanted to reinforce the sense that you're looking at a diagram by taking arial photographs and painting from those.
GR: And then the diagrams were included in the show, and this fall you had a show called Diagram. The way you work is an editing process- coming to an understanding with the subject or theme over long periods of time...
DP: It's a backward approach starting sort of blindly with whatever I want to carry-on about. Whatever detritus piles up in the corner eventually takes on relevance. I have a filing system of drawers in my head with years worth of fragments I need to answer to. So working in fragments I end up with intricate, ridiculously layered.... "maps". But you're welcome to call them pretty.
I actually start simply, realize which stored up fragments gravitate toward the theme I'm working out, and then I'm constantly editing things back down to simple forms with all the information layered in. I'm pretty sure I'll cool it with the production side at some point.
GR: No paintings, no objects?
DP: Once I know or understand what I want to say, I don't really feel a need to say it.
GR: You don't miss much- do you think you could accomplish your [work] without exposure to insecurity?
DP:Sure, but my insecurities are great company. You can put it that way - painfully acute observation.
GR: Are you your favorite thing to observe?
DP: Actually, no. At some point whatever idea or observance I started with evaporates and the scraps become personal, so from that perspective we're all only observing ourselves... if there's a resulting object, it's probably necessary to my sanity-- obsessive need to create and re-create structure.
This isn't a very generous period toward visual art. It's diluted. I have friends in "art school" with tens of thousands in debt and no visible idea or interest in what happened before they arrived. It's surreal.
GR: Is this a low point for visual art?
DP: Oh, it's like working in a vacuum, but it's really a massive shift in what we need [to see and to know, and in HOW we see or know something] creatively.
GR: Cynicism?
DP: There's always a need for cynicism... or else my art-school friends would never find jobs as critics and teachers. More specifically, people are really and maybe rightly unconcerned with thinking too much further than surfaces or next months bills.
GR: Thank you Mister Parks
DP: Here's a coupon. ("Redeemable For One ART")
Ginny Riddle interview
2004 November
Ginny Riddle: When I came to your studio there was a note on the door: "don't come back til you're fabulous". Someone had written on it "but Derek, I AM fabulous".
Derek Parks: I was locked up... keeping a day schedule.
GR: In this new work, rather than supporting the idea that art is timeless or open to interpretation, you're extremely specific about time and place- not at all interested in lamenting the past or democratized aesthetics.
DP: Well the best thing about good art is seeing things or societies or relationships as they are at very specific points. These things are timeless by default, so time-stamps are important to me. I'm only interested in the next question. I really respect the question more than someone trying to force a response.
GR: You think about creative mediums as conduits to connecting with whatever society you inhabit...
DP: Not so much about connecting. It's less direct.
GR: Do you think of art as a way then to translate a given society?
DP: My work is how I personally filter information or understand my situation or experience. It's always about shifting perceptions around. It's always about shifting contexts- change one element and every other element changes. It's those fragments that interest me. They can be overwhelming, which makes them great catalysts.
GR: Give me an example: did you realize all the implications of EARTHSKINS as you were working on the collection, or before you began? I heard someone with a german accent, standing in front of Deep Fried Christ explaining that "it only masquerades as a lush landscape, but it conceals everything you don't want to see." The poison under the surface. The surfaces are so touchable before you remember there's no such thing as an unspoiled landscape.
DP:Yeah, It's true. The valley in those paintings is where my grandmother and her mother grew up. I spent ten years restoring the gardens there- we found long, buried stretches of barbed wire fencing and rotting posts, beautiful broken china around old foundations and footprints of the original house... farm residue. It's spectacular on the surface but then there's a town nearby and a chemical factory ten miles away and so many people die from cancer there. I wanted to reinforce the sense that you're looking at a diagram by taking arial photographs and painting from those.
GR: And then the diagrams were included in the show, and this fall you had a show called Diagram. The way you work is an editing process- coming to an understanding with the subject or theme over long periods of time...
DP: It's a backward approach starting sort of blindly with whatever I want to carry-on about. Whatever detritus piles up in the corner eventually takes on relevance. I have a filing system of drawers in my head with years worth of fragments I need to answer to. So working in fragments I end up with intricate, ridiculously layered.... "maps". But you're welcome to call them pretty.
I actually start simply, realize which stored up fragments gravitate toward the theme I'm working out, and then I'm constantly editing things back down to simple forms with all the information layered in. I'm pretty sure I'll cool it with the production side at some point.
GR: No paintings, no objects?
DP: Once I know or understand what I want to say, I don't really feel a need to say it.
GR: You don't miss much- do you think you could accomplish your [work] without exposure to insecurity?
DP:Sure, but my insecurities are great company. You can put it that way - painfully acute observation.
GR: Are you your favorite thing to observe?
DP: Actually, no. At some point whatever idea or observance I started with evaporates and the scraps become personal, so from that perspective we're all only observing ourselves... if there's a resulting object, it's probably necessary to my sanity-- obsessive need to create and re-create structure.
This isn't a very generous period toward visual art. It's diluted. I have friends in "art school" with tens of thousands in debt and no visible idea or interest in what happened before they arrived. It's surreal.
GR: Is this a low point for visual art?
DP: Oh, it's like working in a vacuum, but it's really a massive shift in what we need [to see and to know, and in HOW we see or know something] creatively.
GR: Cynicism?
DP: There's always a need for cynicism... or else my art-school friends would never find jobs as critics and teachers. More specifically, people are really and maybe rightly unconcerned with thinking too much further than surfaces or next months bills.
GR: Thank you Mister Parks
DP: Here's a coupon. ("Redeemable For One ART")
