Carolyn Swiszcz
David Lefkowitz
Carolyn Swiszcz: The panoramic pieces we’re looking at are 15 to 20 inches high and are of varying widths. They can link up to form one long strip that wraps around a room. A lot of them have newspaper vending boxes, something that I have been interested in for a while. There seem to be so many of them; where do they come from? Why do they keep manufacturing them? Aren’t there enough? I like the ones that are abandoned or have graffiti on them. You know the ones that are on a lonely frontage road with no sidewalks–will a pedestrian out there to open the box?
David Lefkowitz: They are dependent on pedestrian traffic so they are residue of that kind of urban experience. Also, when you draw them this way they are like little architecture in a way… like models.
CS: Or like people. Herds…
DL: …that congregate together.
CS: …and multiply! I especially love when you see them on a busy corner and the grouping stretches from the intersection to halfway down the block. They have every kind of newspaper of the free world. There’s the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the local paper, then you get down to the bottom of the food chain with papers like Today’s Chicago Woman that are free and desperate for readers.
DL: Like the apartment listings for cars or careers. How many people actually find jobs from these things?
CS: Out on the street about a third of these boxes have abandoned beverages on top from McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts. They distribute a product but they are also improvised waste receptacles.
DL: Part of what you find intriguing is the alternative uses people find in this landscape–things that were intended for one purpose get another one. The backgrounds of these, I’m guessing, are made up.
CS: The backgrounds are the areas where I allow myself to add abstract elements. I’ve tried to make completely abstract things but when they are done they don’t feel complete. They end up being more fun to make than to look at. I love making a painting with vast area of grass or parking lot. Then, I have some opportunities for patterns that can also be read as representational.
DL: That’s similar to what you did in this painting of a highway rest stop. I love rest stops, too.
CS: The Minnesota Department of Transportation website shows all the state’s rest stops and what they offer. After I finished the painting I sent their webmaster a picture of it because I had used the website for inspiration and to decide which rest stops to visit. I told him that I thought rest stops were kind of funny sometimes. He wrote back: "From looking at your painting it is apparent that you find some of our amenities amusing." He’s right–I love the shelters, brochures, maps and newspaper machines with issues of trucker news and dating papers.
The other subject I have been painting is strip mall stores and store window displays, potentially the worst of the American ideal. Again, I’m working with these panoramic proportions in multiple paintings that can be arranged to make an endless mall. I especially like plazas where each store has made their own separate choices and they didn’t have to follow standards. These are older malls–strips that have Chinese buffets as anchor stores rather than those that have a Home Depot. Nobody cares enough about these old malls anymore to make signage rules, and stores have had enough occupants that design elements are hand-me-downs.
DL: Part of it is not having enough money to completely redesign it. It’s funny that you talked about not using Home Depot because it’s too new…do you think in 10 or 20 years from now you will?
CS: Maybe 15 years from now. It has to be that period when it’s just old and ugly and before it comes back into being retro-cool. It’s the same with cars. I am not interested in good looking retro cars. Usually it’s 80s Pontiacs in my paintings.
DL: But that will make your work change over time.
CS: Yeah, it will.
DL: I have you thought about what the effect of that is? Because you’re temporally dependent.
CS: That’s something I should probably be more conscious of. I don’t think about how my work will look in the future. Maybe I should just paint what there is and wait as it gets fashionably unfashionable.
DL: I know, it’s a curious question. I’m hypersensitive to those things, too. I’m attracted to exactly the same kind of ostensibly boring imagery that you’re talking about. How important is that they read as specific places and how much is supposed to draw attention to the interchangeability of places?
CS: In individual images it’s hard to be specific but when grouped together (in an exhibit) hopefully they give an overall impression of a region. It’s hard not to get lost in generalities when you’re painting strip malls. Hopefully they will evoke a neighborhood that every town has.
DL: In a way it’s a hugely democratizing thing. It’s familiar to anybody who lives in the United States. I think it’s American, though. This is the kind of land use that is associated with the USA.
CS: Yes, I took my first trip to Europe in 2002 and of course took my camera. It was beautiful there and I enjoyed the trip but there was nothing there I wanted to paint.
DL: Nothing?
CS: Maybe if I spent time living there and got to know things. But immediately, as a tourist, there was nothing off the bat.
DL: There are kind of peripheral spaces in Europe that aren’t the same as what you are attracted to. Different kinds of cluster homes, townhouses and things that have a kind of uniformity. These sorts of landscapes are denigrated for the same reasons.
CS: If I knew more about European culture I would discover the equivalent. Plus as a tourist you tend to go to the "beautiful" places.
DL: I went to Venice about three years ago and one thing I was struck by–how could you make an image of Venice that wasn’t a cliché–in the canals there are boats that collect all the crap that piles up in the canals. These boats dig up the residue. So I made some paintings that include some of those.
CS: I have a hard time painting historic buildings for the same reason. It’s already a complete work of art, but if there is some kind of weird employee entrance on the building, something that has been altered to bring in modernity, like a kiosk in front of it, or something practical like those canal boats, it suddenly becomes more interesting.
DS: Did anybody ever respond to these as though you are making fun of the low end of the economic spectrum?
CS: Sometimes they get described as kitschy. But I don’t think these places are nice enough to be kitschy. Sometimes I think people don’t see the love. What annoys me is when people interpret this work as a criticism of urban sprawl. It’s maybe five percent that.
DL: I guess that’s unavoidable but for me when you see the attention to detail and the love of the quirkiness that on the surface are often dismissed because there is an assumption of uniformity and conformity, to make people re-think that.
CS: I guess that’s the ultimate goal–to get people to look around more. It’s an exercise to look more carefully. But sometimes people say to me, "Oh I went to such and such a place and I saw this thing there that you should paint." And then I go look at it and it’s nothing at all what I would paint. It’s sometimes just a faux nostalgia place, something silly, but missing a necessary darkness.
DL: Can you give me an example?
CS: I guess places like Porky’s on University Ave–the 50s drive-in in St. Paul.
DL: Porky’s is a great example because it’s so self-conscious. What you’re more interested in is things that are either semi-conscious design or totally oblivious design. What do you think of the element of nostalgia? Are these nostalgic and is that good or bad?
CS: Both, I feel more comfortable in the parts of town that look like where I grew up [New Bedford, MA]. I now live in a sleepy neighborhood in the Midwest with buildings leftover from the 60s and 70s. There’s something comforting in the nostalgia, or maybe, on the not-so-flattering side, it’s an ego boost to live where being the most visually aware person on the block doesn’t take a lot of effort. It’s like being undercover.
DL: That’s what I was getting at–is it romanticizing decay? I hope it’s not just a feeling of superiority but part of the appeal is an empathy with the earnest human efforts to have a business. There is something charming about the little signs.
CS: When I see these window displays my heart swells and I think, "Oh! They’re trying! Somebody tried their best with their time and resources." They actually made those decisions and ordered those signs and they had dreams about their business. The hip 30s shopper in me feels guilty for wanting a Trader Joe’s to take over and move in. Ultimately I’d like things to stay they way they are, and since those places seemed doomed, I can at least preserve them in my work.
David Lefkowitz shows at DCKT Contemporary in New York and is a professor at Carelton College in Northfield, MN<
