Arts Alive San Antonio

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF, Editor –

Your current exhibit at the Ruiz-Healy Art gallery shows your work inspired by the time you spent in Berlin as one of the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien residency artists, selected by the Blue Star Contemporary.  How has the Berlin experience impacted you as an artist?

Since, until recently, I always had to have a day job to pay the bills, this residency gave me the gift of time to sit and truly think deeply instead of just moving from having to make money to make art, and back to making money to make more art. So, to have three months to just walk the city – I think I took public transportation twice while I was there – was a huge gift.

How is this experience reflected in the work we are seeing in the show?
It’s absolutely the product of my long walks. What I started noticing on my walks was graffiti in the streets, often graffiti in English. I took photographic images and then when I came home, I sat on it for a while looking at the inmages and thinking about them. The street graffiti really spoke to me. That’s why the exhibit is called Listening to Berlin, because I was listening to Berlin. So, after a couple of months, I started by putting the images in Photoshop, to take away all color, and make the image look more like a line drawing. Then I made monochromatic screen-prints. Most are black-and white but there is a bit of color in some of them. In some cases, it’s the color I saw on the streets of Berlin.

Now you are back in San Antonio! If you could choose between Berlin and San Antonio, which city would you choose to live in?
(Laughs) I couldn’t choose. I would have to do half and half. This is an amazing community and I have been part of it for 25-plus years. But I found an amazing artist community in Berlin, too.

Is it difficult is it to make a living through art alone?
Yes, that’s the short answer. I think everybody I know has, what my husband calls, a day job. Every artist I know has another way of generating income.

Your husband, Nate Cassie, is also an artist. What are the advantages and disadvantages of living with another artist.
There are always advantages! We have a house, dogs, projects, a whole lot of things going on. But when I told Nate: “I think I would like to apply for the Berlin residency, which would mean I would be away for three months,” he said “Why wouldn’t you? You are an artist.” So, that’s a huge advantage; he understood and was ready to support me. Disadvantages? Uh… the only one I can think of would be if we both had a show at the same time, and how we would support each other in that situation. It happened only once.

Which artists, dead or living, do you admire the most?
Oh, my God! A lot of them! When I was younger and still in school, it was Hans Hofmann because his work gave me the permission to move out of formalism, and also Cy Twombly whose work featured a lot of writing and messiness which I thought was freeing. More recently I think Mark Bradford is doing some amazingly strong work. We can go on and on… Among San Antonio artists I would mention Nate Cassie, of course (her husband), Jenelle Esparza, Joey Fauerso. Jesse Amado, Mari Hernandez…

What are you good at besides your professional work?
I am pretty good at organizing and gathering people to work on projects like this one. (She is referring to Forward! Marches that Move Us, a show of protest art she co-curated with Casie Lomeli in the former Flight Gallery where we met to talk.) I like working on projects outside my studio practice. I will be doing (organizational) work for Luminaria, for instance.

What keeps you up at night?
Sometimes it’s bills to pay or all the things that I have to do.

What do you appreciate the most in other people and what annoys you?
What I appreciate the most in other people is their stories. I like getting to know them and listening to what makes them move in the world. What annoys me: impatience.

If you were mayor of San Antonio, what would you want to implement?
Public transportation would be one goal, and I would like to make the city more walkable for everyone. The two are connected. When I was in Berlin I could walk everywhere. I would walk a mile-and-a-half to the art store and a mile-and-a-half back and it was lovely.

What would be a good surprise for you?
To be able to travel for free for a year!

What are you looking forward to right now?
I am looking forward to working for Luminaria this year, and I am also looking forward to working on a podcast with Nadia Botello and Sarah Fisch for which we will be interviewing and recording artists from the art community around us, to create an oral history.

Ethel Shipton: Listening to Berlin, Ruiz-Healy Art, 201A East Olmos Dr., San Antonio, TX 78212; 210-804-2219