Mercury Twenty Artist JoAnn Biagini Interview

Where do you find all your materials and images? Do you spend a lot of time compiling them?

I go to a lot of used bookstores. I like the Berkeley Friends of the Library. I go to Urban Ore. Sometimes it’s random, I’ll go for a walk and find books that people put out on the curb. I just found this neat Japanese book about baseball. It has diagrams in it which I always love. I like pictures of how things move. The new piece I did called “Divers” is like that. I found the images in an old encyclopedia. In that piece I transfered the images and to get them larger I also projected them, and drew from that.

The imagery you find is the inspiration that catalyzes your work?

My response to certain images is the starting point; often I don’t know why I like certain images. I know that a lot of collage artists work that way.

I know that other artists I've talked to who use found objects and images work in a similar way. Living with the material, letting them sink into their conciousness, moving them around in the studio. CeCe Iandoli told me that the way she organizes them is by color.

I organize my stuff by its content. I also collect all kinds of different papers. I try to keep all my findings in my head and I organize it there before I use it. None of that is unusual for a collage or assemblage artist.

For myself, I know that I keep a lot of content in my head and arrange it there. I paint many pictures in my head.
I also plan stuff but then again I work with a lot of spontaneity. I really get into sanding, painting over parts and sanding back into that. The additive and subtractive. In one of my latest pieces called “Owls”, I started out with the subject being leaves and I wanted the piece to be about photosynthesis but it just never came together that way. I was so frustrated with it. Then I saw an owl. So I simply went with that image, just took another tangent and finally it came together.

You made it work.

It worked better. Some pieces are a lot harder to resolve than others. Does that happen to you? Like the “Diver” piece. I put the pages together and started with the color. I wanted to do some pieces about water, to go with Cathy Perillo’s seascapes. But it didn’t work out that way. (laughs)

You have a place to start and sometimes the journey is direct and sometimes it gets convoluted. You look for stepping stones along the way. That kind of process can be pretty fun.

It can be fun. I’m looking forward to it being more fun (laughs) and less frustrating. The “Divers” piece came together easily, I fooled around the least with that one. The book pages and the colors were the start but I really didn’t know what I would do from there. Looking at what I started with made me remember the diver image. I projected it onto the background and it looked right. Then I drew it with charcoal.

I like the way you incorporate subtraction. In my work, I just keep adding; accruing.

You subtract by adding, when you cover something up. But I do physically remove part of the work by sanding back into it. I love the way sanding makes a beautiful gradation or blending of the layers. I have had my technical problems like getting the soft pastel and even the acrylic to adhere to the paper, especially if it didn’t have enough tooth. I’m working through some of those issues. Putting my work on BFK, which is a heavier backing paper, really changed what I could do, and took the work to another level.

Have you always done the work on paper? I remember seeing some acrylic paintings in a show once?

I went through a circle phase and I was working in watercolor and pencil. A friend of mine had died at that time and I felt like I couldn’t think. I was working through some stuff in my mind and I just painted circles for about two years. Then suddenly, I just stopped and moved onto something else.

Your work is an intimate response to things that go on in your life?

I think so. I don’t focus on a subject though. I don’t think I have a very cohesive body of work.

I wouldn’t say that. Your work is always about the human body, natural history, animals, physical processes.

Those are the things I’m attracted to. Those shapes and forms. I find imagery in biology books…

Cells, eggs…

I went through a period where I was considering reproductive systems. I adopted a daughter, Marie, and maybe it was about my own desire to have a kid, but in any case I’ve been fascinated by it. I don’t analyze the ideas that come from my subconscious too much, because I find that it stops me. I think about my students at Creative Growth and how they follow their instincts.

You have said that the developmentally disabled people that you work with are inspirational.

I love the direct way they work. There are a lot of voices in my head that can stop me, “what is this, why am I doing this, what does it mean, will people like it.” For whatever reason, a lot of developmentally disabled people aren’t stopped by those voices. If they want to draw an animal, they do it. They have a natural flow that inspires me.

You got your MA in Ceramics at CCA.

I did abstract work. I wasn’t interested in imagery. We had an assignment in grad school to draw our sculpture. I think that’s when I got interested in imagery. Now I’m crazy about it.

What else inspires you?

Craft and handwork has always inspired me. All the sewing I did as a kid. I’ve always loved making stuff.

Do you still make music? Do you ever play the violin any more?

I do, but I think I got stuck somewhere because I had this idea that I had to maintain a certain proficiency level that I couldn’t keep up. But there’s my violin right there, there’s the piano. Every once in a while I’ll play but I don’t know where to go with it. But it definitely has influenced me.

We went to the same grammar school and played in the orchestra together, so I know you were very good. I always thought you were a lot better than me. (Laughs) But learning music as a kid really sets the stage for art practice later on. You have that experience of translating your feelings and expressing yourself.

I think so. With music, you learn about gradation, dynamics. Those subtle things do translate into visual art. I’m approaching it in a melodic or harmonic way. I’m not much into contemporary or avant garde music or anything too dissonant. I guess I’m not too edgy. (Laughs)

You don’t have to be. There’s something very rich about your work with the layers and depth. You’ve got a great color and design sense. I think your work is musical.

Although I’m educated and I’ve looked at a lot of art, I think those things are natural to me. I try to make things look right. We can look at the four new pieces that I’m going to exhibit in October here on my website. (www.joannbiagini.com). They are hard to see. Actually they are hard to see in person too. (Laughs)

That’s a good thing. There’s a lot to look at, and dig into. Like I was saying with the subtraction and the sanding, your eyes can really dig into the image.

And this one is actually about digging: it’s called “Fossils”. I like to pretend when I did this piece that I’m an archeologist. Then when I do one about the body, that I’m a doctor. (Laughs) This one is so pretty, using the flower forms, a few insects.

Pretty pinkish hues. But the forms are really strong here. You’ve chosen very abstract forms to focus on.
They look like male organs but they are flower forms opening.

There’s your edge. (Laughs)

Here are the “Divers.” See how the composition flowed here? Many accidents happened where the abstract form is repeated in various images; these arcs.

I also really like the grid pattern that the book pages create.

What does the grid mean? Is it just the regularity and structure of it? I like that because I can put all this wild stuff on top of it. There is a diagram of fish here that made a curlicue shape. The fish and the diver’s bodies. It all kind of happened very easily. On other pieces it’s such a struggle to get something to happen. This one called “Owls” took such a long time to come together. I was drawn to the secrecy of owls. You don’t see them that often and when you do it’s usually at night. Did you see the little family of owls in this piece?

Do you add your colors on top?

No, I am working with color all along, on multiple layers. This piece finally got fun when I decided to put all these tree branches in.

Owls in the trees. I love owls. I like David Lynch and he always uses owls. Did you ever watch “Twin Peaks?”
What did he use them for?

His owls were evil. But your owls are not! (Laughs)

Of course they’re not! One summer we had a family of owls in a palm tree across the street. Every night they squawked. We watched them a lot; the parents feeding the babies.

You were in the recent “Bestiaries” show at Oakland Art Gallery, curated by Mercury 20’s Anna Vaughan.

It was a show of artists who use animals in their work. Besides other Mercury 20 artists--Peter Honig, Tarra Lyons--there was Tara Tucker who also works at Creative Growth, David Hevel who does wild assemblages of animals dressed in clothes, Misako Inaoka who makes animatronic hybrid animals.

I’ve noticed a lot of people using animals in their work lately and it seems they are responding to the advancing extinction of animals.

People in the show talked a lot about that. For me, I know I will probably never see a gorilla--like I used in this piece that was in “Bestiaries”--in the wild. I chose the gorilla illustration because it showed different emotions that the gorilla had; different moods of anger. One is stomping, pounding on the ground. This one is throwing a stick, but I have turned it into cherry blossoms. (Laughs) I have the parrots over here, looking on. I think about the relationship between humans and animals a lot and it really informs my work.