00:00:00Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave. I'm doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save
Our Stories interview with Duncan Slade. Today's date is October 20, 2008. It is
now 12:35 in the afternoon and we are in--what town of Maine are we in?
Duncan Slade (DS): Westport Island.
KM: Westport, Island, Maine. [at the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation.] I should
have asked that before we started and I want to thank you for taking time out of
your day to do this with me. I would like you to tell me about "Northwood's
SuiteWaterfall" that you selected for the interview.
DS: Okay, this quilt is part of a suite of seven pieces. It is a commissioned
piece. The work was commissioned by Nuveen, Inc., Chicago, Illinois for a lobby
area in their offices at 333 W.Wacker Drive. We had done some work for them
earlier when the corporation relocated from the historic Rookery. They were
commissioning new work for a new space. Artist Jim Dine had work commissioned at
that time. That initial relationship with the corporation led us to oh, ten
years later being asked to do a lobby area. "Waterfall" is part of that
seven-piece suite. It sits at the end of a corridor and can be viewed from a
great distance. The other six works are located in the reception area at the
opposite end of the corridor. One concern in designing the piece was how it
would be viewed from a distance, pretty much wanting it to be visually
comprehended from far away, yet there is a great amount of detail in it to hold
interest once up close. The cascading waterfall is inspired by a waterfall at
Watkins Glen, New York. We spent time there when working on another commission
for collector Jack Walsh. The idea of looking at water, watching it fall, seeing
the patterns that are made, seeing that you cannot photograph a waterfall of any
length because of the speed of the water. There was and exploration into the
water's pattern, how to make it look like a waterfall but not a photographic
reality of a waterfall, which would be dependent on the speed of the exposure.
Our format of putting a landscape element in the composition establishing the
middle distance is fairly consistent in our work, in that this work doesn't have
a middle distance or a far distant landscape as a component created the kind of
a compositional challenge we like. We were in the dark glen where daylight is
limited so rather than elaborate rocks it was far more interesting to have the
water fall over the border pattern rather than see the waterfall separate from
that pattern. The work started as small thumbnail drawings. We did sketches of
the configuration and how the waterfall would fit into the pattern, they were
probably 4 by 4 feet - little sketches that would let the idea evolve. For our
presentation to Nuveen we executed a work on paper 15 by 15 inches. The pattern
area was done using colored Xerox copies, cutting and assembling the pattern; to
represent what later we would print, then over painting the waterfall with
gouache. Once the design was approved, we started working on the actual piece.
We knew that the pattern area would be printed with no shading, and to make the
side panels appear to stand forward as an illusion would require over-painting
with fiber reactive dyes. The pattern itself is made from a single repeated
element. It is from a drawing of draped striped fabric and that square is used
in a standard grid repeat. The pattern arranged similar to how a traditionally
pieced log cabin pattern can be configured. While we were executing this piece,
there was another concern, between accepting the commission and its execution
the World Trade Center came down in NYC [New York City.]. If in fact the viewers
of this quilt saw the Trade Center in the columns right and left of the
waterfall then we felt that was all they were ever going to see. A delay in the
installation of the work for a period of time may have helped to diminish the
impact of that iconic image. That is one of the things that we understand about
pattern and design, if we can premeditate that something carries weight and is
important to somebody it is going to take on that emotion in the piece for them.
If that emotion doesn't belong to us, if it is not important to the piece, then
we need to make sure that's not what we are communicating. What we intend to
communicate is what we hope is going to be perceived, at least to some extent.
You can't control what people will think you intend, because you don't know
their associations or what is going to happen in the future, what those shapes
are going to mean. It was a difficult time for everybody in this country and
this quilt never intended that emphasis and we hope that it is enjoyed and has
meaning for a variety of other reasons.
After a lifetime of screen-printing patterns and hand coloring and shading, this
work pretty much follows the same process, but for this project the pattern area
was executed using digital printing. The idea that after thirty years of pulling
a squeegee over a screen and bringing that medium to quilt making which wasn't
part of the quilt making tradition, although there are plenty of examples of
applied color to quilts throughout history, we discovered that attempts were
being made to push the same dyes that we had been painting and printing with,
through an inkjet printer, and we weren't afraid of it. It was our medium. It
was our colors and we needed to know how it worked and whether it was going to
be a benefit to us as artists. I remember telling the corporation that we were
going to employ some digital work in this project and while digital technology
revolutionized their business in terms of machinery, computers for transmitting
data and doing bank business, it was changing our world as well. The Nuveen
project was the first time we did an elaborate project using digitally printed
fiber-reactive dyes. We elected to do the shading by hand because we didn't
trust the color modulation would be the way we would want it. We knew it would
put down flat colors as well as we could screen-print so we employed that. It
also let us block out the waterfall, the white in the waterfall is the white of
the fabric, although in close inspection of the quilt you will find some
discharge used, we also used wax as a block-out. Up at the top of the waterfall
there is a light mist given off just as the water begins it's plunge, that was
created by splattering paraffin wax off a toothbrush and then over painting so
that the water falling off the top of the waterfall feels soft. I'm going from
the different components here and explaining things as I'm looking at the
photograph of the quilt. I will elaborate a little more and just say that what
we did is what a photographer or a newspaper or anybody printing can do: go into
a digital file, overlay one thing and drop out what's behind it. That is why we
did an 8 ft. tall painting of the waterfall on black paper, photographed it, so
we could overlay it on the pattern in the computer, so that when we got the
printed fabric into the studio to begin painting, the basic color of the pattern
was there, no shading and the waterfall was in a very, very rough, low
resolution, but we had the white. In effect, we used the digital printing as a
resist so we could have white water falling over colored fabric. In our studio
it was mounted on a panel and we began painting the falling water, and I say we
because Gayle and I work together and the one thing about the 'we' is we never
reveal who did what but we never paint over each other's hand. This piece was in
the studio for the waterfall itself well over a month, studying what we had and
making decisions about what needed to be done, what we needed to see when close,
what we needed to see when far away, thinking about the viewer in the corridor
where it was going to be installed.
KM: We need to say this is 77 by 77 inches.
DS: Yes, it is about 77 by 77 inches. In actual execution the biggest printer we
had access to was 60-inch wide, so it was done in three panels and pieced
together. It was easy enough to piece in obvious break, so you will find the
seams along the inside edge f the patterned area on either side of the sky at
the top, follow that straight down to where it was pieced around the water at
the bottom so that we didn't have to put a seam in the detailed area. It also
allowed us to do a lot of the hand quilting and machine quilting on the
individual panels. When we were quilting, I'm going to move onto quilting. No,
first let me just finish up and reiterate that our work is basically conceived
of as a unified piece even though our general operating procedure is to create
the illusion of being pieced or collaged. We execute as much as we can on a
single piece of fabric. The development of our work was from screen-printing so
we have design concepts coming from our education in the late 60's and early
70's, the kind of work we looked at when we were young artists, the kind of
imagery we were initially interested in. As much as we have never made a
traditional quilt, we have always paid homage to the tradition in the way we
approach things, though we don't execute it a way a traditional quiltmaker
would. A Traditional quiltmaker has craft concerns we don't have, for example
they need to make their stitches small enough so that they won't fetch up on bed
clothing, as artists we have the luxury of not being concerned with those issues
and while we address the form and function of the tradition we can play with
that vocabulary. This is long way to get to talk about why the foreground seems
to jump off of the quilt; we weren't using a traditional landscape that allows
the push and pull from foreground to background. The base of this piece jumps
forward therefore to allow the other parts to appear to set back from it.
Quilting, I think I was moving onto quilting. [laughs.] Most of our pieces are
machine and hand quilted. We have always considered the machine line to be a
hard line. We can use it to perimeter repeat components, so if you approach this
piece you will find the square unit. For Karen's gratification I'm going to show
where the repeat component is in the piece, [shows KM other photos of quilts
with the repeat components.] We will perimeter the repeat components for
structural reasons so they will be visible and a viewer can locate them.
We come from a long tradition in art where playing with arranged elements and
having fun with it is the norm. If you go back to Medieval manuscript
illumination, which we site as a source of inspiration, you will find a
self-portrait of the scribe in a border reaching outside of his own compartment
with his pen and ink, down the page, to a bottle of ink below, breaking the
literal sense of the picture and just playing with illusion.
As we are drawing, we see these drawings, not as anything static, but as
something we can cut up, reposition or reach from one part of the composition to
another. I was talking about quilting- with hand stitching we talk about a soft
line, we put a scrim of stitched, parallel lines or concentric circular lines
over a surface serving the purpose of tying the three layers together. It allows
us at times to add a punch of color, in this particular piece there are metallic
and different colored threads running down the waterfall. We've learned for
example that you can change the color of a fabric by the color of the thread
that you overlay it with. We're always interested in how color functions and how
to modify and control it by mixing, amount or arrangement. It is amazing how
much you can modify the color of fabric with a single line of thread on top of it.
KM: I want you to talk about the 'we.'
DS: The We.
KM: Because I think the we--
DS: Is in context.
KM: Yes, in the context of this piece.
DS: We missed that, the we?
KM: Yeah, and I think we need to talk about the we.
DS: Probably should do it. Gayle Fraas and I work together. And since 1975,
neither one of us have ever signed a piece of art whether it be a quilt or work
on paper, or other things with anything but the signature Fraas-Slade. We have
done that out of respect for each other and for what we initially felt we were
on, which was a quest. It was a quest we shared and it was a quest to figure out
what was the best of us. I think that in many ways it is very much an individual
quest, but there is no mistake that we are both 'on it.' Both of us would say
that we were lucky enough to find something that we could work on with somebody
else, having the joy of working together has worked for over 30 years with
neither of us having ever felt subservient to the other- it has been an
interesting way to work. If something happened to either one of us or our
marriage, neither one of us would go looking for somebody else to work with but
would continue on with this workwe know that this is the way we would
proceed. We found a way of working, a vocabulary of working; it's a vocabulary
that we have honestly pieced together from the greater world around us. We went
from being urban art students to living a rural life and through our tools and
materials we found a voice that has allowed us to have an existence as artists
in a culture that has been accepting of the kind of work that we've been
interested in doing. So, pretty much, it has worked out well for us. We work in
a studio that is a renovated barn. If one of us is not in the studio usually the
other one is and there are lots of days when we are in there together. Some days
it is not big enough for both of us. At times one person does need to be alone
to work and there are times when it does take two people to manage handling
materialsthat is all just the give and take of how it works. We wear separate
hats when it comes to finishing the work. While we both draw, design and paint
(mostly separate pieces), Gayle is the quilter. I get a lot of input into how
certain things will work, we negotiate it out and she does the stitching. I do
the mounting and framing. Most of our work is small enough, even this 77 by 77
[inch.] piece, the waterfall piece, is framed. For it we used a welded aluminum
frame with Plexiglas over the front. Our concern with framing is to create an
archival environment where the piece can live. In the early 80's we were invited
to see the Esprit collection and we consulted with their curator, Julie Silber,
about how we framed our quilts. Visiting her we saw that even a corporate space,
where people wear nice clothes and behave nicely, in a nice environment that
damage can be done to a textile surface. It's our opinion that when a collector
spends money on our work that it is partly our responsibility to make good
choices about protecting that investment. We have done a lot of work in terms of
how we mount, how we frame and how we keep that environment archival. I have
pointed out on occasion that many of the great 19th century quilts we have to
look at today is because they have spent most of their time stored away in
trunks lined with low acid paper and adhesives in use at that time and protected
from UV light. What we do is stretch a panel of linen on a sealed wooden frame
and then stitch the quilt to it. Framers have to make decisions about how wide
of a mat a work should have so we also are making those kinds of decisions. In
years past, I've milled and finished our own wooden frames. Right now we are
using powder-coated aluminum, which is contemporary, and a clean simple look.
While quilt framing preferences change over time, I think of framing, it's style
and size as how the quilt lives in the room in which it's hung. There are times
when specific style matters.
KM: Why quilt?
DS: Why quilt?
KM: Yeah.
DS: There are lots of stories that we tell about how we ended up making quilts
together. One of them is that as undergraduates Gayle came and asked me if I
could print on fabric. I was interested in the technical ends of printmaking as
well as the kind of imagery it created. This was in the early 70's, the era of
Andy Warhol and I had a fascination with high contrast imagery, printing was
just the perfect tool for that. In printmaking one of the things you get to do
is to sign those prints, you line up the individual pieces of paper and sign
them and it was always vry interesting to see the repetition of those images,
the power of the design of the repeated elements as they were being laid out.
[laughs.] That was as exciting as what I was actually doing as a student at that
time. There was another phenomenon, for printmaking you set up screens mounted
with a couple of hinges so the screen can be lifted and lowered so the paper can
be put under the screen as a method of keeping the print in the same spot on
each paper. There was a eureka moment one day working with Gayle, when I pulled
those hinge pins and put the screen on a large piece of fabric and positioned it
wherever I wanted it. There was a release of that rigid format of printing
controlled, signed, numbered editions. Our early work was mostly about what we
could control with screen-printing, we would draw with pen and ink on clear film
and use a photographic process to transfer the image to the screen and then
print that image onto the fabric. It is a great way to create sharp hard edges
on fabric. Over time we reached a point where we felt comfortable simply sitting
there, doing the work, painting directly on the fabric. I could go to work in
the morning with a brush in my hand and have the job done easier than setting up
to make four or five screens to do the same. It's all about finding the right
tool for the job, finding the right technique. The other answer to why quilting
is fiber-reactive dyes. We tried lots of different materials developed for
fabric and we did a lot of different things with fabric in the beginning. In the
first five years there was no cohesiveness to the work we were doing.
Fiber-reactive dyes had been around since the 50's and made available to artists
in the 60's, they are versatile and there is a lot of interesting stuff being
done with the dyes now. Few other artists have bothered doing this kind of
controlled hand painting with the dyes. We do what we do in part because we live
in a place where we like what we see, we chose to be where we are in Maine, in
the studio, looking out the windows in all seasons. It's our excuse for going
out kayaking or hiking up a hill. We are working - it's our job. If we travel,
we are looking for things that play into the work, whether it is a pattern
element in a tile floor in Tuscany or hiking up into the saguaro cactus, it is
going to end up making it's way into our work. Did I finish? Where do you want
to go next?
KM: How do you want to be remembered?
DS: I've always had a thought about how the Art World works. If you're the only
one that does something you are an eccentric, if they copy you, emulate you, if
you have students, then you are the founder of the movement. So I would say that
right now as I look at it I don't know how the larger art world will judge us.
We know that our work fell out of the primary art concepts for this period of
time and that in some ways our work situates much better in the 19th century
than it does in the 21st. Times will change again, so in a hundred years we
might look revolutionary, you don't get to control any of that. Whether vanity
or good business we have attempted to keep documentation. We've tried to keep a
good photographic record. If somebody does think that the effort we have pursued
is worthy, then we have given him or her a paper trail and imagery. The thing
about us it that we haven't had the luxury to make art and let it stockpile for
some curator to find, we've had to sell what we make, that is how we've made the
majority of our living. About every ten years, we've had to look back at how we
got here and ask questions about what was important then, what is important now
and just kind of get our feet under us and refocus. It is not always pretty to
look back at your own chronology. [laughs.] But once in awhile you have to do
that. Once in awhile we have to go find something that we did because we'll be
doing something now and realize that it feels familiar and need to research our
own history with some element in our work to understand how and why it's playing
out currently. Oh, being remembered! I think another component here is in terms
of the quilt world - I think there is a role we've played - we've shown up when
quilt guilds have asked us and have tried to be accommodating and we've watched
the evolution of quilts starting out primarily traditional to now when a great
many quiltmakers are far more accepting of contemporary approaches and enjoy
making their own fabrics to work with. We've watched the evolution and have been
involved starting with exhibiting in "The New American Quilt" at the Museum of
Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Art and Design in NYC) in 1975 and we
were included in the exhibition that coined the term 'art quilt'-- the
exhibition, "The Art Quilt" that Penny McMorris and Michael Kile curated. We've
watched the quilt world struggle with defining what a contemporary quilt could
be and we've watched them put parameters around and tighten that definition to
the point where we don't seem to meet the criteria. So while we've worked to
open a lot of doors, we don't necessarily always fit through them ourselves. I
guess we have always been happy to sit on the sidelines of most of the topical
arguments and let our work be the primary thing that represents us. I've pointed
out to Michael James on occasion that he has voiced many of my concerns and have
joked with him about some of the heat that gets created within the quilt world.
I have already expressed our concerns about archival qualities and I did write
an article for Surface Design Journal when we were concerned about the lack of
interest quiltmakers had for responsibility concerning the archival qualities of
their work. So yeah, how do we fit in? Some people see a hierarchy in the
contemporary quilt world and assume it will stay constant over time. My reading
of art history doesn't assure that. Getting into certain books and shows and
being in certain collections is how researchers in the future will generally
find and decide artistic value. Gayle and I won't show up as dominant in this
time frame, but I would like to think that some curator would find our work
interesting. The other issue here is quiltmaker, craftsman, artist, each can be
defined as it's own category and everyone loves to have tidy categories. Our
work falls through the cracks between these defined realms. A little too
painterly for quiltmakers, a little too crafty for painters, and not quite
enough manipulated materials for craftsmen. We try to figure out the best venue
for our work . One, where people will be able to see it because ultimately this
is a medium about communication and two, we need to sell it, so we've got to put
it in places where there is the likelihood of that occurring. The way we like to
think about it is, there are times to look at the work on the walls in the
studio and there are times where it is exhibited and you can get cleaned up,
walk in fresh and see that body of work unencumbered by the materials and tools
you make it with. You are with your friends. You are talking to them. You are
looking over their shoulder at your own work and you get the opportunity to
think and have a fresh eye, it's just the work would suffer if you didn't get to
have that fresh eye. I think that is just part of growing as an artist. You need
those opportunities. You need to create those opportunities. You need to put
yourself in the position where people are going to say stupid stuff so that you
can be dismissive of what they just said but then think about it later. You need
to do some of that. You need to be confident in what you're doing, but also need
to be scared to death that you are doing the most stupid thing. It's a little
bit of all of that. It's about keeping an open mind.. And that is it. As artists
we believe that if you work hard, what you do will add to that whole massive
pile of defining humanity, and if you set yourself on the quest to do it in a
way that is honest -then meaning will come. So it is not like we set out to
change art, maybe more that we set out to have art change us. I'm looking for
words that will say it has never been about ego. It wasn't about trying to make
art that would somehow make it into the history of art; it was just about making
art honestly about the world as we were living in it. Where are we? What have
you got?
KM: Well I think we are going to be done. We have been talking for 50 minutes.
DS: Yeah? I'm sorry.
KM: No, you were wonderful.
DS: I've probably missed some important. If it's important probably Gayle will
talk about how we collaborate in terms of how it is conceptual and you can ask
her some technical questions about the dyes if that's important. This is fine.