Words Kate Orne Photographs Martin Crook

Originally published in No 6

“I think, with the move, I was able to get some distance from the city. I was just too close to it. There were too many artists, too many galleries, too many people, and way too many restaurants! I’m already dealing with ADD and it just…. Up here, I was able to just lock it all in. The work just started speaking to me and suddenly my career kind of exploded. I don’t think I would be the artist I am today if I stayed in the city…”

KO: I remember when you guys lived on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn and hanging out with Kate, whenever I dropped off film to be processed at LTI… 

JM: Yeah, there is an Apple store there now. I always joke that Violet was conceived where the iPods are sold. We lived and worked in that building for 10 years, I built my career in 241 Bedford and look at it now!

KO: You haven’t done so badly. (Laughing)

JM: Well, yeah, it was getting out of Brooklyn that actually did it. There was so much real estate greed at that time. We had a commercial lease, a classic illegal loft situation in New York. There were plumbing issues, eight tenants sharing a bathroom and kitchen. The landlord didn't do shit to fix anything. Kate and I played with the idea of moving upstate, we had bought this house, but we weren’t ready. We were going back and forth and one day we looked at each other and said, “Why are we staying in Brooklyn? Screw it.” I had a gallery, my work was selling, Kate could afford to quit her job at LTI, so, we just did it. 

I think, with the move, I was able to get some distance from the city. I was just too close to it. There were too many artists, too many galleries, too many people, and way too many restaurants! I’m already dealing with ADD and it just…. Up here, I was able to just lock it all in. The work just started speaking to me and suddenly my career kind of exploded. I don’t think I would be the artist I am today if I stayed in the city… 

KO: After you moved, did your work connect more with nature?

JM: Sure, yeah. But you know, I grew up with hippie parents on a piece of a land like this, in northern California, during a time when it was all about The Grateful Dead and surfing. Cali was amazing, the history of San Francisco, Janis Joplin and all that shit. 

Then Apple came… it was a really beautiful place that was kind of ruined by the tech industry. So, when we discovered this place, it was kind of like going home to Northern California, except for the winter, which is insane. When I was living in Brooklyn, the art was about nature colliding with the city. When I came here, it was about man colliding with nature. It flipped.

KO: That’s interesting.

JM: Yeah, I used to do drawings of weeds breaking through the sidewalk. I love to draw.

KO: I’ve seen your mosaics at the U Avenue station on the B/Q line… beautiful. 

JM: The native weeds and flowers of Brooklyn influenced all those.

KO: So your parents are artists. Did you have any other aspirations? 

JM: I was raised in a very artistic and exciting family. I think for a time, during high school, I had problems with that and I wasn't sure if I wanted to go that route. I was kind of a jock. I was pushing back a little and then I ended up taking a painting class in college — and I just fell in love with it. Choosing painting was kind of a protest against my dad, who is a sculptor. And it took me a long time to realize that I had talent. I always thought my dad had all the talent. 

By leaving California and moving to New York, and thus getting some distance from my family, I really started to grow up as an artist. To this day I’m still torn between whether I’m a sculptor or a painter. I go back and forth all the time.

KO: Can you be both?

JM: Yeah, I’m both. I’m like a painter in a sculptor’s body and a sculptor in a painter’s body. I think that’s why I’ve been successful because I feel I can do both. A lot of the artists that I respect; Bruce Nauman, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella all had that sculptural / two-dimensional life. I don’t love the painters that are just painters. Nor do I love the sculptors that are just sculptors. I fell in love with painting first but I’m big on the physicality of sculpture. I love this idea that the planks become both a sculpture and a painting. I love to paint with mosaics, like I did in the subway. The mosaics really came about because I wanted to work with a material that would last outdoors. Wood is good but it doesn’t hold up outside, not in the Northeast. 

KO: Where did your idea for the plank sculptures come from?

JM: My friend Nick said, “I got to take you to this wood museum.” Obviously I kept thinking it was a museum. (Laughing). But it was a giant mill and, to this day, I don’t tell people where it is because it’s like my shrine. There’s building upon building full of indigenous trees, like curly maple, oak, walnut, elm and ash that have been milled and kiln-dried. When I first went there, I was just blown away. I bought a couple of slabs and leaned them up against the wall in my studio. This is like in ’07. My work at that point was very literal in terms of environmental stuff. There were a lot of oilrigs on fire, Baghdad explosions and pipelines going into communities. 

I tried to make a painting on this plank and I realized this has to be a shape that’s inspired by the grain, something abstract and not literal, otherwise it would be kitsch. I thought about surfboards, John McCracken, the history of totems and aboriginal art. So I made an abstract painting and then I was off to the races. I made plank after plank after plank… 

The first time I showed them in New York, in ’08, I didn’t sell a single one. The second time, in ’10, I sold out the whole show. Then I went to Miami and sold out there… 

KO: And now you can’t make enough of them.

JM: Exactly, but I started doing these smaller wall pieces. Yet I kind of feel as if the plank would be like my McCracken. Like if I was known for one thing, such as Sol LeWitt and his wall drawings, the plank would be my thing. 

Now I’m starting to work with a new gallery and I kind of want to do something else, like drawing, and they’re saying, “We just want planks.”

KO: Does that limit you? 

JM: Yes and no, because I believe the planks can get even better. With the planks, I kind of feel like a visitor making this gesture on the surface of the wood; the tree basically did all the work — a 100 years of work. My paint, it’s just sitting there kind of like a skin. We have basically built a ‘skin’ of structures on the surface of the planet. And as soon as those structures go belly up, the planet will reclaim the surface and break that skin. We are just a bunch of temporary visitors.

KO: Do you think your daughters will become artists?

JM: I don’t think there’s any doubt. But if they’re not artists, they’re definitely going to have taken a shot at it because they grew up in this world, and the beauty of me working at home is that they see it every day. They’re immersed in it.

KO: Do they have an influence on your work or do they collaborate with you in some way?

JM: I think so, yeah. Sometimes I think the abstraction doesn’t do it for them. But if there’s a complexity to it, they pick up on it. 

I have a theory. When we look at a piece of art: I believe that time plus effort equals a response. So if you go to the pyramids or if you look at an Indian miniature painting, you see the time that’s put into it. You see the investment and it has an impact in your gut. When something is not a long investment, you don’t respond as much and I see that with the girls. They’ll be like, “Oh, whatever.” But if I’ve been working on something for a month or so, they’re like, “Oh, what’s that? That’s pretty cool.”  

KO: I find that a lot of artists are also collectors.

JM: At this point, we’re into collecting real estate. We have some land now: we buy cheap and fix it up — whatever it takes — it’s our pension. I’m really into music so I collect that and of course art books and sneakers — I’m really into shoes. (Laughing) Sometimes I buy art — but I’m always trading with other artists. Sol LeWitt had an amazing collection, mostly based on trading. That’s my dream.

KO: Do you believe in God?

JM: Nope, I’m an atheist. I’m too much in love with nature to believe in God. Nature is far too complex for us to even understand, let alone a figure out. I feel like we’re afraid of nature, afraid of decay and death. We’re afraid of what we don’t know so we invented God. If anything, Nature is God. We had to create something to help us grasp the idea of all this stuff. Religion is like a dumb explanation for it all. And then there’s space! We can’t even go into that because if we had any idea how insignificant we are…

Jason Middlebrook’s work is featured in ART+NATURE+HOME : Online 5/1 - 7/1,’21 and at Foreland, 111 Water street, Catskill, NY 5/29 - 6/13,’21

British photographer Martin Crook documents the passion and skills of craftmen and artist; from Tiffany & Co to Frank Gehry. Martin shot Kris Perry for Issue 3. martincrook.com