Artist Interview: Gina Telcocci
Artist Interview: Gina Telcocci
The Mix
Gina Telcocci joined The Mix to talk about the exhibit Collaboration and the process behind the Stone Soup Project. Gina and two other artists, Deborah Benioff Friedman, and Phyllis Lasché all worked together to create works of art rooted in their visual, physical, and tactile qualities. Their work encourages viewers to experience the art and the surrounding space at a visceral level.
About the Stone Soup Project
https://www.ginatelcocci.com/stone-soup-project
As Stone Soup, we work to develop art which is formally abstract, but rooted in its visual, physical and tactile qualities, work that encourages the viewer to experience the art and the surrounding space at a visceral level. We believe that the source for much of our work originates from a primal, pre-rational impulse. We may interpret, and layer ideas and meanings on it, but the real power comes from the “presence” of the work, plied from ordinary materials, its tangible essence.
Thus, we have developed a way of working together that is spontaneous and without preconceived notions. We bring no specific intentions when we give each other pieces to work on. One of the few “rules” of our collaboration is that once we hand over a piece to each other, anything goes. The artist is free to do anything to that object, including actions that may be destructive.
The process is derived from the old dada/Surrealist “exquisite corpse” parlor game. Stone Soup’s way of working is characterized by a call and response – each piece that comes into one’s studio is observed, responded to, then passed to another in an ongoing cyclical rhythm. Not knowing what we’re going to get, or how we might respond, keeps the exercise fresh. The result of each piece’s progression is a group stream of consciousness.
As the body of work has accumulated, themes and patterns have emerged from the pieces themselves – our complicated relationship to nature/environment; a shared interest in and respect for found objects and ordinary materials; the passage of time & its effects on our physical & emotional lives.
Collaborators
Gina Telcocci
Gina Telcocci is a sculptor and installation artist devoted to the power of the hand-made object. Working with wire, wood, and other organic and found materials, she uses a variety of assemblage, traditional crafts, and weaving techniques. Her sculptures are mostly abstract, with an emphasis on structure and form, but with textural and layered complexity.
Telcocci has received numerous grants and awards from, among others, Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Pollock/Krasner Foundation. Public commissions include Potrero Hill Library, San Francisco, CA, Albany Memorial Park and Walnut Creek Library, both in California, and UNM/Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her work has been exhibited across the U.S., in Mexico and South Korea, recently in the de Young Open, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
Telcocci currently lives and works in Oakland, CA, where she is a member of artist-run GearBox Gallery. She also works collaboratively with the art group Stone Soup. And she spends time as often as possible on her rural Northern New Mexico property where she grows and harvests willow.
Deborah Benioff Friedman
http://www.deborahbeniofffriedman.com/
Deborah Benioff Friedman is an artist and retired veterinarian living in the San Francisco East Bay Area. She is self-taught but has taken workshops in many disciplines including encaustic, drawing, color theory, joomchi, paper sculpture, and wire sculpture. She works with a variety of materials, mostly repurposed, but has a particular affinity for rusty metal and used paper such as teabags, book pages, ledgers, paper bags, and all kinds of envelopes, to create abstract compositions, both two and three dimensional. The pieces she makes reflect her attachment to objects warmed with the luster of human use. She makes mobiles with her husband Tom Russell, hikes the California hills, reads and writes poetry. Her father, a sculptor, and ophthalmologist taught her early, not only the importance of art in the world of medicine but the joy of materials in her hands, whether clay, pencil, needle and thread, glue, or a paintbrush. His emphasis on simplicity, balance, and the avoidance of artifice, have been the backbones of her work.
Phyllis Lasché
https://www.phyllislasche.com/
I am most aware of Earth’s dynamic interconnections when I am in remote wild places, alone, with a concentrated mind. In my current artwork, I reference shifting states of air, water, and earth. I apply multiple layers of beeswax and pigment, building and scraping away bits of shapes, colors, lines, and textures until the entire surface is worked, bits of previous layers are revealed and, with no shape or layer more important than any other, all intertwine in a matrix. My abstractions are often just on the edge of specific figuration, inviting viewers to reflect on continual adaptations occurring in the natural world.
