the semi-finalist is: colin Kippen

Work in progress in Colin Kippen's studio.

Colin Kippen possesses a nuanced understanding of how our emotional reality is presented through color and light, a trait that brought to mind (quite unexpectedly!) the work of Pierre Bonnard. Although separated by a century, a continent, and obvious compositional proclivities, both artists revel in and reveal the mysteries of the everyday. Unlike Bonnard, Kippen often employs a deadpan sense of humor to comment on subjects like consumerism, but he and his long deceased predecessor both engage in a form of simple, poetic storytelling to insist that the quotidian is special, not because of how it objectively looks, but as a result of how we experience it with our heads and our hearts. A table with fruit, a Mediterranean garden, or (as in the case of Kippen) an old oven mitt all radiate the colors of dreams and  memories. To be too literal in representing these objects, Kippen and Bonnard both seem to be arguing, would mean disconnecting them from our inner lives.

One of the many, many things that I enjoyed about visiting Kippen’s workspace this summer is that I often didn’t know where the studio stopped and the artwork began. At times it felt like a mildly chaotic workshop, a realm where the nooks and crannies are only ever truly understood by the artist reigning over it - and that was the familiar part. It was such a joy to spend time in his personalized atmosphere of controlled chaos. Kippen’s studio, however, also acted as a door into another world, one where the materials, methods and outcomes felt like they were taking shape in a parallel universe - this was the unfamiliar part. It struck me as a place where gravity and physics often work in alternate and confounding ways; where ordinary, overlooked objects shimmer with an iridescent glow that I normally associate with hummingbirds and certain insects. A natural raconteur, Kippen had no trouble bringing the surrounding overgrown garden of a studio into manageable relief with tales of his years as a student, an apprentice, and eventually an artist dedicated to developing his own creative voice. 

I’m very pleased to be able to share my interview with Colin Kippen this month on The Semi-Finalist. Below are photos and responses to several questions I sent him not long after I visited his studio.   
​
- David Schell
  10/28/2024

Colin Kippen in his studio. 

The Semi-Finalist: When I visited your studio I loved hearing about your path to becoming the artist that you are today. Can you talk a bit about your formative years, the work you were doing early on, and who influenced you along the way?

Colin Kippen: I took art classes in high school but never really considered myself one of the “art kids,” even though my mom is an artist and my dad was an opera singer. Those art kids were way better at drawing and seemed too out there for my straight-laced younger self. I went to a liberal arts college and tried on a number of majors, 8 to be exact, and when I had to declare a major, I felt the most drawn to and fulfilled in art classes. I took my first metalsmithing class in 2002 and was immediately hooked on the torches, the hammering and the challenge of using this material as an expressive medium. Growing up rural and poor primed me to enjoy the practical aspects of knowing how to solder and hammer metal: I was able to ply my trade to pay tuition and even exchange wedding rings for a car. When I moved to Portland in 2004, metalsmithing helped me find gainful employment working part time for two earring manufacturers while beginning an apprenticeship with a local jeweler. The apprenticeship expanded to full time and lasted a total of 9 years, leaving me able to fabricate lots of intricate things out of platinum and gold, repair fancy jewelry with a laser welder, set diamonds, plus countless other skills and knowledge. In 2005 I enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program in metals at Oregon College of Art and Craft. This is the fully functional teapot I made in my spring term out of sterling silver:

Swoop
2006, sterling silver, wood, tea infuser
Photo: Dan Kvitka

I also began a series of cast rings inspired by geologic formations. After graduating, I began selling my own work at two galleries in town, creating work in my makeshift home studio, buying tools as I sold pieces. This is a good example of the wedding rings I created for couples: ​

Horacio and Richard 
2014, stainless Steel, patina

As the apprenticeship became a full-time job, I was working 9-5 and then also working parts of evenings and weekends making jewelry for my own clients. This grew tiresome and, after taking classes to see if I wanted to become an engineer, I enrolled in Oregon College of Art and Craft’s MFA in Craft with the hope that I could discover my own artistic voice. 

​Grad school was transformative. My first year was spent almost exclusively working in metal, trying to find my way into an expressive visual language. Under the guidance of Christine Clark, I started by making a teapot in copper, then a coffee pot, then a kettle:

Teapot, Coffee Pot, Kettle
2014, copper, wood, found iron, spray paint
Photo: Richard Gherke

I was battling my inner need for practicality, annoyed at how long things took, how toilsome the material was. I discovered Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and began to incorporate randomness and chaos into my practice. I love the prompt “remove specifics and convert to ambiguities.” I decided to make a vessel, cut it up into a random number of pieces and reassemble it into 4 new vessels:

One into Four
2014, copper, brazing rod
Photo: Richard Gherke

Then I did the same with something that I purchased rather than made, in this case a copper gutter downspout:

One into two
Copper, brazing rod, spray paint, 2014
Photo: Richard Gherke

I was looking at Vincent Fecteau’s work and was blown away by his use of color on form, his use of cheap materials like cardboard and papier mache to create abstracted form. I soon began my color journey (with the above piece as my first) using graffiti spray paint and falling in love with the overspray of colors seen for the first time on the bottom of this sculpture:

Two into One
2014, copper, brazing rod, spray paint
​Photo: Richard Gherke

Heidi Schwegler took over from Chrstine as my 2nd year advisor and she pushed me to engage with other artists' work on an emotional level, tossing aside analysis and planning. I switched to casting cement (faster and cheaper) and embedding objects into it while it cured. This is an in-process shot of a sculpture from my thesis work, a cement casting of plywood with a cut tire embedded into it:

Zeugma (Ply)
​In Process photo, 2015

At this point I was looking at artists like David Benjamin Sherry and Tauba Auerbach for their use of color: I wanted to instill in the surface of my sculptures an otherworldly appearance, something that draws in the viewer. I also was intrigued by the sculptural musings of famous painters, particularly Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg and the wonderful bronzes that Miró created. Each of these artists, in particular, created 3D objects that still had a frontal image quality, or at least a side to the object that contains a great deal more information.

Zeugma (Ply)
2015, concrete, wire mesh, tire, spray paint, binding wire,  50"x29"x23"

My MFA thesis work solidified a process that continues in a similar fashion nearly 10 years later. I found objects I loved in free piles and on the side of the road, often while taking my first child on walks and drives. These objects needed to have some sculptural content that caught my eye: a particularly stunning crumple or something related to a theme I was curious about. These things would then be combined with cement castings of various textures found in and around the home. Textures like grocery store fruit box dividers attached to a crumpled trash can:

Rubbish
​2016, trash can, concrete, shredded personal documents, wire mesh, spray paint. 20"x26"x15"
​Photo: Julia Saltzman

Or a casting of a bibb-lettuce clamshell attached to a rusted, handle-less shovel:

Reap/Sow II
2016, cement, perlite, shovel, wire mesh, binding wire, acrylic paint. 19"x14"x9"
​Photo: Evan LaLonde

This combination of two disparate entities, one cast and painted, the other found, creates a new conceptual meaning, akin to wordplay. Sometimes the meaning is clear to me the moment I join the objects together, other times the meaning remains obscure even though I work the metaphor over and over. In the case of the bibb lettuce container and the shovel, I had a clear idea that the shovel is part of the sowing process and the plastic container comes from the packaging and shipping of the harvested lettuce. The sculpture represents a compression of the beginning and end result of farming in contemporary society. 

Diet and Exercise
2020, cement, tricycle wheel, acrylic paint. 16”x16”x13.5”
Photo: Mario Gallucci

A tricycle wheel embedded into a casting of a gallon milk jug made sense to me as a musing on parenting: what we feed our kids and how active or sedentary we are can have a big impact on their health. 

Feed and Nourish
2020, cement, IKEA high chair, flexible conduit, plastic pipe, acrylic paint. 18”x36”x65”
Photo: Mario Gallucci

Above is an example of a piece that still doesn’t make sense to me: An IKEA high chair with its opening glommed over with the casting of a Costco-sized egg container. I understand it as a metaphor for exhaustion but is the cast egg carton a stand-in for a child, or does it comment on how much we have to feed our kids? Is it significant that the egg carton once held 24 unborn chickens and now it weighs down the high chair? I don’t know the answer yet but enjoy the conceptual puzzle these combinations provide. ​

Swept
​2021, paper pulp, spray paint, broom head. 18”x16”x9”
​Photo: Mario Gallucci

In 2021 I was awarded the GLEAN residency and spent many weekend days wandering around the waste transfer station in NW Portland looking for interesting things. Finding artist materials at the dump was like a fire hose of objects compared to the pace of discovering cool things in free piles in my neighborhood. It also opened my eyes to the immense problems in our throw-away society. I switched to using paper pulp to cast into various textures and continued the practice of combining found objects into the pulp as it cured. Swept (above) is a visual representation of what happens when we purchase a new item and throw away the old thing we replace it with. In this case, it’s a paper pulp casting of the styrofoam packing blocks of a vacuum cleaner joined to the tired broom one might throw away once the new purchase is unpacked. Another sculpture is a paper pulp casting of some old carpet padding with a dustpan (not visible) embedded in the back side as a hanging mechanism. The only reason I can think of to put these two notions together is their common relationship to the floor: one element is an invisible cushion under the rug, the other an implement for picking up after sweeping. The resulting sculptural form has an undulating and bodily presence which pulls it firmly away from the banalities of carpets and chores.

Floored
2021, paper pulp, spray paint, dust pan. 39”x17”x5”
​Photo: Mario Gallucci

As the pandemic has waned, my sculpture storage has filled up, and my studio time has shriveled, I've been doing a series of smaller flat works that act more like paintings than in-the-round sculptures. These are quite fast and allow me to focus on color and form as the main aesthetic factore. They have the added bonus of being easily hung on the wall in the living room when they’re done being shown. I have been exploring textures of objects that are integral to our home life, integral to the support and protection of our bodies. These range from a cement casting of a mattress:

Sleeping Patterns II
2023, cement, wire mesh, picture wire, acrylic paint. 18"x15"x1"
Photo: Mario Gallucci

Or a casting of a baby changing table pad:

Changing Patterns
​2023, cement, wire mesh, picture wire, acrylic paint. 18"x15"x1.5"
​Photo: Mario Gallucci

Each of these wall sculptures memorialize daily routines like sleeping, cooking or changing diapers, presenting the viewer with a facsimile of these intimate objects, brightly colored to entice a fresh look. Last year I found a 3D printer on a parking strip and have been trying to integrate the very hands-off process of scanning an object, cropping it in software, printing it, and then adding paint to its surface. During my GLEAN residency I so badly wanted to cast a series of mattress textures but only two out of dozens I saw were free from stain or smell enough for me to feel okay bringing sections home. Now that I can effectively scan and print textures I can both bring less junk into my studio and avoid potential health risks when I finally get around to collecting more mattress textures. For now, I have scanned and printed an oven mitt and the backrest to a velvet rocking chair:

Mitt
2023, ​3D printed PLA, acrylic paint, 9x7" x 75"x1"
Photo: Mario Gallucci

Chair Back
2023, 3D printed PLA, acrylic paint. 7.75"x9"x1.75"
​Photo: Mario Gallucci

S-F: One of the things we talked about in your studio was how to squeeze an art practice into a very full life - something that you truly appear to be excelling at. Talk about how you make it all happen.

CK: I find it funny that anyone thinks I excel at an art practice! Lately I’ve felt pretty buried by the demands of parenthood and maintaining my multiple adjunct teaching positions throughout the metro area. This past year has seen the longest lull in studio time since grad school but this summer has allowed me to rekindle a practice that I hope to maintain more intentionally going forward. I focused a great deal in grad school on laying the foundations of a solid studio practice: bringing in objects I love into the “stew room” (a great term for a studio, borrowed from someone I can’t remember), keeping a hint of workspace free so I could make on a whim, and trusting that even if I just come into the space and shuffle things around, it will be enough. I admit that trusting this notion is not easy but I now know that my studio habits can withstand a 9 month break…

​I maintained a steady trickle of studio time after my first daughter was born (this was only 6 months after getting my MFA), sneaking in concrete pours during nap time, working with her in a carrier, etc. At that time I taught one class and was the primary caregiver, with some help from my in-laws. We moved to this house in 2018 and I got the garage which is what you see today. My second kid was born shortly after this and I spent time cultivating a practice in this space until the pandemic hit. I was able to keep my art going through this time, largely because I had some great opportunities lined up, among them the GLEAN residency. After about two years of online teaching, late night grading, art practice and family life I hit a pretty big wall and felt absolutely burnt out. I’m only now recuperating from this and have scaled back my nine-to-midnight studio time so that I can keep some energy in the tank. This fall I will have both kids in school full time and that gives me some hope that I can juggle teaching and even have some time during the weekdays to make art in my studio. I am thankful that my adjunct teaching allows me to keep up a “minimum creative output” of sculpture demos and drawings even if none of that amounts to official artistic output.  

Above and below: work in and around the studio; the artist in his backyard. 

S-F: How do you see your work relating to the concepts of the practical and the impractical (I believe "post-rationalization" was a term that came up)?

CK: In my years as a jeweler I developed a way of making that was necessarily practical: clients and my boss wanted me to work from a plan so that when I was finished, the ring or pendant looked like what we agreed on from the start. This meant that any work I did had a predictable and consistent end result each time. This is a great for getting good at a particular trade or craft, but didn’t fit my inner artistic needs. Throughout graduate school and since that time, I've been interested in creative processes that surprise and confound me. Even if I have a notion of what I’d like to make, whether it’s a simple rectangular casting or two specific things I want cemented together, I let the process, materials, and especially color have an outsized influence on the end result. 
Post rationalization is the idea that you make something and then, after it’s done, try to figure out what just happened. It allows for intuitive and playful things to happen while you’re making and can free up some anxiety about the end result. Post rationalization is also consistent with Rule Number 8 from John Cage’s 10 Rules for Students and Teachers: “Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes.” 

Work in the studio.

S-F: I’m so drawn to how your electric, radiant palette fuses with your casting of ordinary - and often overlooked - objects. Can you talk about how this merging of materials came about?

CK:  I spoke a bit about this in my origin story above but didn’t really delve into how it came about. In my earliest cement castings, I was thinking about analog ways to copy objects and, in a way, 3D collage them next to found objects so that I might work through notions of past, present and absent. The found object–typically something discarded, worn or fragmented–retains evidence of a past life: the rusted and bent shovel, the food stained high-chair, or the battered mop handle. The fresh casting is formed from something now gone—a ghosted imprint of a 7-Eleven food tray, a blanket or a door. The color infuses the cold lifeless cement with a glow that visually connects the sculpture both to the present and to a presence akin to vibrant flowers, phone screens and workout clothes. 
​
Color usage for me varies depending on whether I have a plan or if I want to intuitively respond to colors as I mix them. I’ll sometimes swatch colors from contemporary paintings I’ve seen recently, or colors I’ve seen on my kid’s toys. My main goal is to have the surface of the cement command equal or greater attention than other colorful things we’re constantly distracted by. In this way, like a flower attracting a bee or a snake warning of venom, I draw the viewer in so that they might stare at the texture of a washcloth or a weaving pattern on a mattress.

Work on the wall in Colin Kippen's home.

S-F: Who are you looking at (alive or dead)?

CK: I haven’t been seeing much work in person lately so I rely on the horrible Instagram algorithm to deliver work to my phone. I just stumbled on paintings by Robin F Williams who uses amazing colors for her figure paintings. Some other painters that I look to for color are Ramona Nodal, Amy Bernstein, Elizabeth Wise, Anya Roberts-Toney, Wayne Thiebaud, Annie Lapin and many others I can’t list. I love Anselm Kiefer’s sculptural paintings. Sculptors I often look up are: Richard Tuttle, Franz West, Rachel Harrison, Tim Hawkinson, Ivan Carmona, Hannah Levy, David Altmejd, Robert Gober.

The outdoor studio.

S-F: What’s next?

CK:  I was asked to share work in the next issue of the Buckman Journal which should be out in December. I also have a group show coming up in October at Threshold Collective in Chattanooga, TN where I’ll have work alongside Rachel Zur as well as a fellow OCAC Alum Lindsay Martin Gryskewich. I will also have another show at Albina Press in December to show some more flat texture castings.

You can see more of Colin Kippen's work:
     - on his website: www.colinpkippen.com/
     - on instagram @colinpkippen
     - at the Archer Gallery website: www.archergallery.space/colin-kippen
     - in Drain Magazine:
       drainmag.com/indexing-the-unwanted-a-conversation-with-colin-kippen/

More Kippen: