Mitzi Pederson Artist Talk

A Pederson painting I drew from memory.

I went to the Mitzi Pederson artist talk at Real Time and Space, a building that houses artist studios, or maybe it's the artists in the studios, or maybe it's a combination of the building and the people.

Anyhow, Mitzi is a woman artist, and she talked about the paintings of sculptures that she taped to the wall in front of us, the audience.  She talked about not bringing a slide show and showing paintings instead of a slide show because that worked better than slides.  She also brought some collage work that I didn't look closely at, and some other collage work that she did with photocopies.

I don't usually listen to people talk about abstract art, so it was very new and different.  she talked about filling a space and that made sense to me because I kind of see art as something that fills a space.  

I feel like you should've gone instead of reading my lame attempt at describing it because being there and watching her try to put into words what she has done and is doing was illuminating.  How do you talk about abstractions.  I guess words are abstractions.  She mentioned the word "language" but didn't go so far as to say what she did was part of language.

And you get to see her personality in action which to me was interesting because here she is, going into creativity land in her soul to make her art things, and it's kind of a wild space where things just happen for the fuck of it.  And I suppose this is relevant to her because she apparently likes the idea of chance in work, or at least that is how someone described her work to me.

She mentioned the word, "simple" or simplicity, and when she said that, I thought of poetry and poems for some reason, I guess because they can be short and to the point, and there's elegance in simplicity, and simplicity can be beautiful, and well, I don't know.  I like stick figure art.  what the hell am I talking about.  anyhow.  I wasn't bored.  It was a little awkward to watch her struggle with words, but everybody was nice and supportive so it was fine.

There were other things she talked about, but I won't tell  you because you just should have gone.  She talked about her photocopy collages, and it made them seem fun, her manipulating visual information to create different experiences.

I drank a bottled water and used the restroom.  I sat on a wooden bench during the talk.