Beatrice Modisett

BIO

Beatrice Modisett grew up moving back and forth between the imposing and structured architecture of Washington, DC and the powerful, rocky riptides and pummeling Nor'easters of a tiny island in New England. Early and even exposure to both of these disparate places carved the synapsis that lead to her current research and obsessions. She lives and works in Queens but delights in the fact that she feels equally at home in New York City as she does building a campfire and pitching a tent in the deep woods of upstate New York. Modisett earned her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Montserrat College of Art and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has had solo and group exhibitions at Maier Museum of Art (Virginia); Eastern Connecticut State University (Willimantic, CT); HallSpace (Dorchester, MA); Queens Museum (Queens, NY); and Assembly Room (New York, NY) among others. She has participated in residency programs including Wave Hill Winter Workspace (Bronx, NY); Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy); Hambidge Center (Rabun Gap, GA) among others. In 2020 she was nominated for a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and was named by Artsy’s Alina Cohen as one of “11 Emerging Artists Redefining Abstract Painting”.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am interested in the space between creation and destruction, convergence and collapse. I consider this to be a hopeful space and look for instances of it in my individual internal landscape, the social-political landscape, and the broader non-human landscape. It is memories and visual speculations of the latter that inform the imagery of the drawings. This interest in collapse and regrowth is further embraced through process and material. The drawings go through multiple iterations before the final image is formed resulting in a surface built from thousands of gestures of loss and repair. The drawings consider the power and paradoxical hope of the wiped out, the smudged, the erased and rebuilt. I create the charcoal I use and the frames that house the works in the same fire pit deep in the woods of Summit, NY. I am interested in these seemingly destroyed charred remains serving as the impetus for new ideas, images and objects. This close collaboration with fire allows daily interaction with a force known for its ability to simultaneously destroy and nurture.

Interview with Beatrice Modisett

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? Who or what were some of your most important early influences?

My earliest influence is absolutely the two very disparate places that I called home as a child and young adult. I grew up moving back and forth between Washington, DC where I was born and a tiny island in New England where my parents were employed. Being evenly imprinted by these two places early on manifests in my current desire to live both in the city and in the woods. It is also apparent in my use of mark making and the way I arrange space when building an image. DC has a lot of fantastic (free! air conditioned!) museums and my parents made sure we got to them all. The art museums made the biggest impact on me and I count the Robert Motherwell and Alexander Calder pairing in the National Gallery of Art atrium as one of my earliest and most impactful memories of experiencing art. I grew up around creativity with a father who was always writing stories and journal entries, doodling and singing songs and a mother who always gardened or was growing something somewhere. Through the years and through multiple phases and interests, looking at and making art was the only thing I was ever truly and consistently obsessed with. I was lucky enough to have a family and teachers who supported and nurtured that.

I didn’t really understand the point of High School since I wasn’t motivated by any great career goals, but my art teacher played a major role in helping me get focused enough to put a portfolio together to apply to art schools. I ended up at a small school in New England which made me feel safe enough to fail and flail. This community helped raise me so I stayed for almost ten years after graduation. I worked an office job for a few years before committing to starting up a studio building in the city. It was an old factory building and I spearheaded its revival as a center for artists. Over three years I filled over thirty studios and put up as many shows in the gallery space while hosting huge open studio events. I was paid like $100 a week but had a free studio.

Succumbing to what I now realize is a pattern, I quit that job to travel. I spent two months backpacking alone through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar. I slept on buses, in the jungle, in packed hostels and in the homes of local families. It was a time when I really was able to reckon with what I wanted to do with my life. When I returned home I made a body of fifteen oil paintings based on my trip, had a solo show in Boston and applied to graduate school with those images. I moved on from New England and landed at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

Any stories you can share about early memories of how an aspect of the arts impacted you?

I remember the first time my mother brought me to see live theater - we saw the Phantom of the Opera in New York City. I was probably in 4th grade and will never forget how I felt when I heard the first note play and the chandelier come crashing down. Truly a spectacle, but it hit me in the same way as seeing the Robert Motherwell for the first time, my heart skipped a beat. For a long time I chased after that feeling when making my own work, wanting to have that impact on a viewer. Now I am much more interested in what follows that initial impact. I still reliably cry every time I see live music or theater knowing the amount of love, time and work that goes into creating something like that. The privilege of being able to experience the fruits of someone’s vision is truly a gift. I admire, and might be a little envious of, the collaborative nature of music and theater since I am so often alone when making my work.

Where are you currently based and what initially brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I live in Ridgewood, Queens. I originally moved to New York two weeks after graduating with my MFA because I had a job lined up here and family and friends. Part of me wishes I had stayed in Richmond to be with my cohort a little longer but another part of me is really happy to have jumped right in to New York. I can’t see myself living anywhere else; I like being able to walk home from the studio looking like Winona Ryder at the end of Heathers without anyone batting an eye. Being surrounded by so much art and so many fantastic artists keeps me focused, motivated and engaged. Broadly, I revel in the access I have to museums, galleries, comedy clubs and music. Locally, in Ridgewood, I revel in the tight art community. There is an ever growing number of artists to exchange ideas and energy with and I plan to stay here for a long time. I live right next to a park and can hear crickets and morning doves from my apartment but Manhattan is a quick train ride away, satisfying that constant desire to be both city gal and forest hermit.

Can you describe your studio space? What are some of the most crucial aspects of a studio that make it functional? Do any of these specific aspects directly affect your work?

In Ridgewood I have a 300 sqft space in a commercially zoned building a twenty minute walk from my house. I feel really lucky to have found this space through my friends from VCU. It was actually built out from a raw space by VCU grads a decade ago.The landlord lives upstairs in a loft and there are two other artists on my floor. It is a really gritty space which I appreciate because it means I can make a mess, which my work requires. There is no heat or AC but space heaters and window units do the trick. Outside there is a large concrete courtyard where I can use my blow torch and do heavy sanding. This is surrounded by more studios and a roof deck - it is pretty perfect. There is always someone doing something in the courtyard - there are metal workers, sculptors, furniture makers, musicians, painters - this constant buzz keeps me energized and I’m honored to contribute to it. But it is also crucial for me to have privacy so I can make a mess without disturbing anyone else. I need room to work on the wall and the floor and a window to the outside to remind me I am part of something bigger than what happens in that room. During the summer I spend a lot of time at my property in Summit, NY, where my studio is a clearing in the woods centered around a fire pit and picnic table.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

My studio practice is responsive to the seasons. So a day or week in summer is very different from a day or week in winter. In the warmer months I spend a lot of time in Summit camping in the woods, taking photographs, nurturing ideas and quietly collecting and making materials to bring back to Ridgewood.

In the colder months a typical day is much more usual. I’ll wake up around 7:30 and admire my plants and think about the day ahead. I stretch out my body while I make coffee. Ideally I’ll read for an hour before even looking at a screen. I try and get everything that requires a computer done first thing. After emails are all done I’ll wash the dishes and leave for the day. The 20 minute walk to the studio is a really good time to remind myself what I need to work on that day so when I arrive I can get straight to work. What I actually do in the studio varies from day to day. Right now I am focused on making frames which is a different headspace than making drawings, and both take up so much room (physically and mentally) I can’t do them simultaneously. If there is an opening that night I’ll leave early but otherwise I work until about 6pm and head home to work out and eat dinner, or meet a friend for a drink.

I also work a non-art related job two days a week which I try not to think about.

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Are snacks involved? ☺

I always take photos of my studio and work right before I leave for the day. If for some reason I am having a hard time getting out of the house the next morning I’ll look at those images and remind myself how much work there is to do - and how lucky I am I get to do it - and out I go.

Snacks are involved in almost every facet of my life.

Is there anything that interrupts and stagnates your creative energy?

The most disruptive thing is when my body is tired or in pain. My work requires a lot of physical exertion which I relish, but when my shoulder is messed up or I am just foggy brained, it’s hard to get things done especially since I rely on a lot of somewhat dangerous tools and processes. I’ve learned to not push my body too hard (unless I have a deadline) so on these days I still go to the studio but I’ll clean, or read or call a friend to catch up.

How do you select materials? How long have you worked with this particular media or method?

It is important to me to have history with the materials I use or a story behind their discovery so I rarely order materials online or go to an art supply store. My surface for the last two years has been a smooth grey paper that I found stashed in a corner of Materials for the Arts in February 2020 before the start of a residency at Wave Hill. My residency came to a swift end when COVID came so I returned to my studio in Queens with the stack of mostly untouched paper and it has been the support for hundreds of drawings since. During a time when we were conditioned to embrace distance and be wary of touch this paper held my haptic obsessions and documented the movement of my hands and fingertips while considering all that was collapsing around me. The tactile closeness I felt with this paper reignited the desire to have the same level of understanding of all of the materials I use in my studio so I began drawing with handmade charcoal and wood ash. After each of my trips into the woods, which inevitably include multiple campfires, I scoop the contents of the pit into a metal bucket to bring back to Queens as drawing materials and for making frames. These campfires have been witness to my solitude as well as energized innumerable conversations and dinners. The charred remains are imbued with the history of these moments, and by extension the drawings and frames hold them as well. I am more interested in the potential metaphor of a material than the art historical precedent of it so choose mark making tools that hold personal meaning and history.

Can you walk us through your overall process? How long has this approach been a part of your practice?

I grew up in a house that needed a lot of renovation. Some of my earliest and happiest memories are of wandering the house on weekends and collecting the detritus left behind by the carpenters, electricians and plumbers. I’d scrape these materials together and spend hours alone in the backyard concocting little sculptures from the found materials shaded by an enormous Silver Maple tree. I remember incorporating rocks, twigs, dirt and bricks as well. After going through a BFA and MFA and reckoning with my relationship to painting and art history, I am happy to stay I’ve circled back to my roots. My process begins outside and is dependent on the accumulation of materials and memories - trees are almost always involved.

I work standing up and draw on a flat surface. I surround myself with the materials I may need so they are all within reach. Every few minutes I vacuum the area to get rid of excess dust and eraser shavings. The drawings themselves go through multiple iterations before the final image is formed. If I think a drawing is resolved I’ll hang it on the wall with the rest of them. Over time the drawings that don’t belong to the family reveal themselves and I erase, wipe out and rebuild.

In graduate school and for a few years after I was making really large paintings, the largest being 9’x 12,’ and I made a few 16’ long drawings. Making work this size demanded a lot of my body and celebrated and indexed my strength and reach. My physicality now manifests itself in the collection of fire wood, processing entire fallen trees with my chainsaw and axe, and wrangling scorched and crumbling wood into a form that can hold its shape and protect my drawings. The finished pieces are smaller than works I made a few years ago but occupy space in a way the large works never did. The strength behind them is quiet and powerful.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

When I was 25, and after years of saving, I quit my full-time office job to travel across the country. My route was planned around my immense desire to ride the California Zephyr, a fifty-one hour train from Emeryville, CA to Chicago, IL that goes over the Rockies and the Sierras, through deserts and the Great Plains. To get to Emeryville I rented a car and planned a five week trip that would take me through many of the National Parks. I was traveling alone and it was winter so most of the campsites were either empty or had one or two other tents up. I got to spend some really wild nights by myself in some very remote landscapes. The most pivotal part of the trip that spurred a lot of my current obsessions were the hours I was able to spend alone with Delicate Arch in Moab, Utah. Void of the usual tourist crowds I got to sit and stare at this formation and grapple with the fact that the forces that create it are also simultaneously destroying it. Destruction was making space for creation. Ultimately this led to my understanding that landscape could serve as metaphor for an interior self. I continue to be obsessed with this space between creation and destruction, convergence and collapse and have managed to wrap my head around it as a hopeful space. The imagery of the landscape out there still inspires me, as do all of the other spaces I have moved through since then. While my imagery, materials and process evolve and change over time, the core research has stayed consistent for over a decade. Future goals for the work include making my own paper and pushing the dimensionality of the frames. I take a lot of photos which I consider sketches, and I see this medium taking up a more substantial space in my practice at some point. Right now I am marinating and relishing where I am so I’m in no rush to push on to the next thing.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

Right now my biggest collaboration is happening with my partner, Ellery. He is a classically trained percussionist and founding member of TAK ensemble. We are currently working together to build an off grid retreat in Upstate New York for artists and musicians that are as interested in the poetics of the woods as we are. This project is inextricably linked to the work I am doing in my studio. We’ve had a number of visitors to the property and I consider each one a collaborator as they share ideas and feedback for what the space could be and how it could make space for and uphold ideas.

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?

I had a lot of momentum in early 2020. I had just come off a life changing residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy, opened two solo shows at Universities and started a long awaited residency in NYC. After three years in New York I felt like I was starting to claw my way towards the life and career I wanted. Then COVID came and my residency ended before it had really begun and my show at Randolph College’s Maier Museum closed two weeks into its three-month run. I felt like my head had been cut off. I spent the next three months reckoning with the fact that suddenly no one cared about my work but me - and even I was struggling to find meaning in creating it amidst the immense upheaval of 2020. With external support temporarily cut off I asked myself what would sustain such a solitary practice? What work do I make when no one is looking? This was a deeply painful and difficult time but it led to the work I am making today. I am now so connected to my work and research that external interest is no longer the driving force it used to be. This is a healthier and more sustainable place for me, and ironically (but also of course) I am finding deeper connections with the people who do see my work and are interested in what I am doing.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

I have found a much better balance among all the things that make up a life. Pre-COVID I was very strict and rigid about how I spent my time and it was almost always about being in the studio. I now realize how important it is to spend time reading, watering plants, hiking, being with friends, going to openings and spending time with family. The more fully life is lived and the more life experiences I allow myself the stronger my work will be. I have finally learned that it is not just about work ethic, or sacrifice or networking, but about being open to joy, love and rest alongside a focused and ambitious studio practice.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I recently rewatched “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and was struck by how much is encapsulated in such a short film. The bending and abstraction of the audio was captivating and it is a gut wrenching story that embodies the hope of being alive. I am increasingly interested in contemporary classical music and composers. They bear immense weight from the history of their canon and I am energized by the drive and seemingly endless imagination of composers and performers. I recently saw an improv trio set with Anna Webber on saxophone, Anaïs Maviel on vocals and Du Yun just crushing the koto. They drifted in and out of abstraction and filled and bent space in a way I’d love to be able to do in my drawings. Lee Bontecou, Judith Bernstein and Lee Lozano are constant sources of inspiration.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

My phone is filled with images from Joan Snyder’s recent show at Franklin Parrasch - her use of sticks and leaves on the surface felt like a mix of confidence, jubilation and defiance. I had a really beautiful experience at Charles Moffett a few months ago when I stood in front of José de Jesús Rodríguez’s work. Tess Bilhartz at Rubber Factory really sticks in my mind too. As someone who grew up near the ocean, I appreciated her ability to capture the fear that accompanies the peacefulness of wading out into the waves. She has also developed a really idiosyncratic drawing process which I am mesmerized by. I returned to Ever Baldwin’s solo show at Marinaro multiple times. The space felt deeply personal but also pointed to so much outside of itself and I love how his emotional connection to the act of burning is so different from mine, expanding what the gesture means. Some of the best work I see is not in galleries. My favorite studio to visit is Kerri Ammirata’s - her powerful work and words are always evolving and I am thankful we are neighbors. I will be forever excited to see new work from Shana Hoehn, Kristen Sanders, Sandy Williams IV and Victoria Roth.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Almost everything in the correspondence between Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse and “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I have been developing the dimensionality of the frames I make for the drawings and they are becoming more and more gnarly and sculptural.

I have a group show opening in the Fall and I’m looking forward to contributing to Deanna Evans’ online programming in the Winter. Hoping to line up a solo show in New York City soon!

Anything else you would like to share?

Thank you for this opportunity! Maake has been introducing me to new artists for years, I am honored to be a part of it.

To find out more about Beatrice Modisett check out her Instagram and website.