Today we’d like to introduce you to Garry Noland.
Garry, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
After showing my great-grandmother, Estella Renick, a drawing she said, “you’re going to be an artist”. I had heard of artists but thought that at least I have something to shoot for now.
My family, especially my wife Connie, is supportive and some were artists but wouldn’t have called themselves that. Both Estella and my grandmother Dora Noland made quilts and rag rugs from discarded materials. Two professors from University of Missouri at Kansas City, Louis Cicotello and Eric Bransby, were extremely influential. Cicotello, a sculptor, has passed, Bransby (101 years of age), last I heard, is still painting outside Colorado Springs, CO. I last saw him in 2015.
As with many other artists there are lots of different jobs to help support the family. I worked in plastic factories, warehouses, coal yards, power plants and later in an office. My studio practice has always been in the picture.
In 2016, after being laid off my last day job I moved to Los Angles from Kansas City. Peggy Noland, our daughter and artist, has been here for several years and introduced us to LA.
I’m 64. My process at the time was, “what could I do to invigorate the work?” Next was, “what would I do if I was 25?” I moved my studio to a neighborhood just off Slauson and Broadway. The crowd of artists surrounding BBQLA, Dalton Warehouse, now space, Holiday and ALSO are a huge part of why LA is so good.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
WHAT do I do/make/create? I hope to never, really, come to that conclusive answer, If I ever do it means I’ve quit the studio for some reason. The work evolves day to day and intraday. Ten years ago (or even last week) what I’m doing now could not have been predicted but retrospectively it makes sense. What I do trust in, regarding the studio, is what we might trust in regarding our personal contacts: Sometime we rely on how something is said, rather than what is said. The same describes my work.
Summarily, I make sculpture/paintings from found and discarded materials. The new work uses foam, cardboard, tape, paint, paper and wood. I count materials to speak for themselves. Where any artist comes in at, is the process of employing the simple verbs: abut, separate, subtract, add.
If artists can exercise care in their process then they get a chance to elevate/transform the base materials. It’s what we get to do, hopefully, with our own human base materials. Everyone, in this sense, is an artist.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
We have to figure out some way to re-direct conversation, creatively, with those on a different side. Art has been key in doing that. Abstraction was employed, in the name of social revolution, in the early Soviet Union. The same abstraction was rejected as degenerate by Nazi Germany. So, it’s not the thing, it’s the context. As the world is not “just one thing” neither should artists be “just one thing”. Our country’s (indeed the world’s) political and social climate called for me to find a different way to speak to/about this. A series of collages on thrift store posters was my way to this. “Attention Fascists” (2017) recalls early collages made on postcards and later work, using Morse Code, to deliver political messages.
The posters were produced by the U.S. Dept of Agriculture in the mid-1960s. The lettering came from a National Geographic advertisement for Alitalia Airline, I changed “Attention Escapists” to “Attention Fascists”. The posters re-affirm that Fascism, the result of fear and ignorance, is always just around the corner or over the horizon.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
In LA: Two group shows at Dalton Warehouse and ALSO Gallery. There will be a three-artist show at California State University-Dominguez Hills (with Aubrey Ingmar-Manson and Ann Weber) beginning October 25.
Outside of LA: Made and Connected, an exhibit with Peggy Noland, at John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan Wisconsin and a solo show at Cleve Carney Gallery in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. I am open to studio visits with an appointment through my website.
Contact Info:
- Website: garrynolandart.com
- Email: garrynoland@gmail.com
- Instagram: garry.noland
Image Credit:
Portrait: the artist
All others: EG Schempf
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