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THE OPENING is all about introducing the fascinating, quirky and wonderful people working in and around the visual arts in Vancouver. Each week, we'll feature an artist, collective, curator or administrator to delve deep into who and what makes art happen! |
Many of you probably already read The Jealous Curator. Her blog is enormously popular, with a following spanning the world. But did you know she was based in Vancouver? Danielle Krysa is a seriously wonderful person with an incredible enthusiasm about art and especially discovering art she loves at random. What's not to like? If you don't already read her blog, you should!
collage by Beth Hoeckel (see original JC post here)
What led you to create The Jealous Curator?
Well, I’m an artist myself. If I was online and looking around and I found artists that I loved, it would totally inspire me for the first couple minutes. But then it would kind of crush me because I thought, oh I’ll never be as good as that. And so I had all these blank canvases in my studio and I wasn’t doing anything with them. I was stopping myself before I started. I was just exhausted from it. My husband actually said why don’t you start a blog, and just catalogue these people, write about it from your point of view and just see if that helps. So now when I find a good artist, instead of feeling bogged down, I think nice! Somebody said to me, if jealousy is kept inside it becomes very very toxic. That’s the bad jealousy that everybody talks about, that just eats you alive. But as soon as you say it out loud, it becomes admiration and you sort of turn it on its heels, and it doesn’t have that power over you anymore.
So you’re not using jealous in a negative context?
No, and a lot of people think that. I’ve gotten tons of emails and tweets saying that they think it’s terrible that I’m using this horrible emotion and celebrating it. It hurts my feelings because that’s not what I intended at all, and I’ve put that out to my readers a couple times just to say hey, just so you know. And so many of them write back and say yeah, all you have to do is read one post and you know that’s not what you’re talking about. I think with the name sometimes people think that, but it’s not my intention at all. It’s meant to be jealous in a good way, admiration and envy basically.
What community of people are you most looking to appeal to with The Jealous Curator?
I think other artists who feel that way - stopped and frustrated and halted - to realize that there’s room for everybody out there. To share in my jealousy, celebrate it, and say man that’s good stuff. To get you back in the studio and get you creating too.
paintings by Shawn Huckins (see original JC post here)
I mainly write about contemporary emerging artists because I find that they’re the ones who aren’t being given a break and aren’t being put into galleries. So if I can give them a break and give them a whole bunch of exposure, hopefully they will feel better about themselves and continue with their work and get into the galleries they want to be into. The cool thing I find about the blog now is that the [Mikael Kennedy] show I have coming up – maybe 500 people are going to see that. But the post I wrote about it the other day, thousands of people have already seen. In a show I can only touch 500. So there’s something really powerful in the blog, exposing emerging artists online, because you can give them worldwide coverage in a few keystrokes. I don't want it to sound like blogs are the only way. When I get to see it in person, it's so different! Scale and brushstroke... you can’t compare the two. But as far as exposure for emerging artists, it's amazing what the blog can do. I'm really proud of that.
There's this one woman in the States, somewhere in the mid-west. She's very accomplished but she doesn't have a ton of exposure. I don't know how I found her, but I wrote about her. I knew Frankie magazine in Australia, an art and lifestyle magazine, would love her work. So I emailed them directly and said I think you would love this woman, go check her out. Sure enough they loved her, and they did a four or five page spread on her work. It basically changed everything for her. She sent me a painting to say thank you and said you have no idea what you just did for my career. And I said to my husband, I think I'm more excited than her almost! That thrills me! They didn't mention me in the article and I didn't care. I was beyond thrilled that this was happening to her. So that's happened now a few other times with other artists and it gives me a huge high.
That's so great that you go out of your way to make that connection for someone!
I kind of feel like a matchmaker. People will send images to me, and sometimes they're not my taste. That doesn't mean it's not good, it's just not my taste. So subjective, right? But I'll think, you know what? I bet Jeff Hamada from Booooooom would love this. Or I bet Amy at Pikaland would like this. And so I would send the link to those blogs that get much more traffic than mine, and say, hey I thought you might like this, and every time I've done that, the other blogs have written about the people. So I write back to the artist and tell them it’s not my taste, but that means nothing because Booooooom is going to write about them instead and they have 3 million viewers a month. So I just try and be a little matchmaker… and it’s not part of my business plan or anything, I just find it really fun, and very satisfying. If someone did that for me as an artist I would be so thankful! I just always have that in mind – how would I feel if my stuff was passed on? I’d be over the moon! It’s fun. Art karma.
Where do you find your subjects?
Mainly online. Sometimes at shows and stuff. Other art blogs, which I always give credit to. But I spend hours and hours and hours a week going through… if galleries have an artist list, I will go through every single one if I think that the gallery suits my aesthetic. Out of a hundred I usually find one or two. Everyone always asks what my pre-requisite is. And it’s so silly, but it really is a punch to the gut. If I look at it and think, you know my little tag line “damn I wish I’d through of that!” It’s true! If I see a piece and think that, I write about them. There’s lots of work I find that I like, but I don’t write about it unless I have that punch to the creative gut where I think, Ohhh god, why me?
I’m impressed you’ve managed to maintain that for 2 years.
I know! I remember when I first started, it was about 40 posts in when I started thinking that I was not going to be able to maintain it. Daily posts, are you kidding? And now I’m almost at 700 posts, almost 700 artists. It is like turning on a tap, it is an un-ending supply of people that I just keep finding. It’s amazing.
Ben Skinner from 'Try a Little Tenderness as Painful as it Seems' at Honfleur Gallery in Washington DC
I love that! What is your aesthetic?
I am a graphic designer. There is a graphic design leaning in most of the stuff I really like. There’s often typography or transferred images. Mixed with… I have a huge thing for texture, so embroidery, things sewn onto canvas, or textiles. It is kind of craft meets graphic design, smushed together. I didn’t realize that was my aesthetic until I went through all my posts and realized there was a theme developing.
When I was in fine arts, I had a teacher that said I should really go into design school. I felt that was a huge blow, but she was right. I went to design school, and it was a much better fit for me. For years I ignored art. I was focused on my design career and it was all about design. But I always still wanted to make stuff, and had that sort of percolating on the side. Then I realized, why am I making them mutually exclusive? I can marry them in my own work! I can take everything I learned in graphic design - why can’t I use typography and all these different things in my work? So that’s formed my preferred look.
You’ve recently taken what you do on your blog offline, and curated a show at Honfleur Gallery in Washington DC, with another curated show opening tonight at Catalog Gallery here in Vancouver. What led to that?
Way back in the beginning, along with wanting to catalogue people who made me jealous and to own that, I was also thinking that maybe I’d like to be a curator. The blog was partially to show my voice, show my taste. Being able to put together a little show, tell a story with the work, I just find it really satisfying. When the Honfleur Gallery in Washington DC called, that was my dream email. I had it in my head while I was posting away for a year and a half, you know, wouldn’t it be cool if a gallery just asked me to guest curate? That was my pipe dream. And then I got this email in October of last year, and I thought it was a practical joke! How, what, really? Within six months the show went up and it was real and it was so satisfying, and the show was so beautiful and I was so proud of the artist and the gallery was amazing. I kind of caught the bug and wanted to do more.
When I went to Salt Lake City to speak at Alt Summit I met Paul Burger, who knew a whole bunch of people in Vancouver, one of the people being Rob Squire, the director of Catalog. He said you’ve gotta meet him, he loves your blog already and he doesn’t know that you’re in Vancouver, I’m going to hook you guys up! So I talked to them and I told them about Mikael Kennedy, who I wrote about years ago and I had this idea for a show. And I thought the Catalog space would be great for it so I pitched them the idea. The Washington show and the Vancouver show have just happened very organically without much effort. It’s not like a square peg round hole where I’m really trying to make this curator thing happen, these two shows have just happened like yeah, let’s do it. And it’s just been the best experience.
So tell me a bit about Mikael’s show.
He is an amazing guy. For ten years he has had no money and basically couch surfed and hitch-hiked back and forth across the US. He’s based in Brooklyn but he can’t seem to stay in Brooklyn, he just can’t stay still. He would sell his blood at blood banks to pay for Polaroid film, and then keep going and shooting and shooting and shooting. He had just over 3000 Polaroids amassed from this time and he just kept them with him and kept traveling and shooting. When he landed back in NY, somehow he got hooked up with Peter Hay Halpert who has a gallery there, and they wanted to represent him. They took those 3000 Polaroids, edited them down to 500, and showed them last year in October at the Chelsea Hotel in Soho calling it ‘Shoot the Moon’. It was just a synopsis of these 10 years, of these people and places that he had seen and met along the way. I loved the show - that’s how I found him, through that show online. I wrote about it, and then he wrote me to say thank you, and then we just sort of started this friendship back and forth.
Selected Polaroids by Mikael Kennedy
I looked at that show so many times, and what stood out for me were the photos of the women . They’re just gorgeous! I wanted to know more. You could see different girls popping up here and there over the years. Was that a girl who he was with or was that a just a friend that he bumped into sometimes? You’d see one random girl that you’d never seen before and wonder, is that a one night stand or just a girl at a train station? These stories just started coming up in my head. So I emailed him and said I want to take all the women out and curate a show just of these women from this time in your life. And he loved it. So we called it ‘Pieces of the Moon’ because it’s pieces from ‘Shoot the Moon’. There are a few horses and a few seagulls in there too, they just have a very feminine energy about them so I thought it was a nice visual break. It’s going to be so pretty.
Sounds like! Thank you!
No, thank you!!
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'Pieces of the Moon' with Mikael Kennedy opens tonight at 6pm at Catalog Gallery, and runs until July 17th. You can follow The Jealous Curator on her website or via twitter at @jealouscurator.
All images courtesy The Jealous Curator.
