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Scott Fife’s exhibit, Northwest Perspectives at the Tacoma Art Museum was a 25 year survey of this talented, Northwest sculptor’s work. Scott has a degree in Architecture and Fine Arts, from University of Idaho and the Minneapolis School of Art & Design respectively. Carol Bolt interviewed Scott at a café on 10/23/04, where they talked about his Art, Architecture and Leroy, the puppy. The following are excerpts from that conversation.
Carol Bolt: What do you see as connections between your studio work and being an architect?
Scott Fife: Although, I am trained as an architect, studio art is my focus. So in answer to the question, essentially it's the structure the pieces are built around, it could be seen as framing especially in the furniture pieces. Also the subject matter, again especially the furniture, I was looking for archetypes.
CB: What archetypes were you looking for?
SF: An anthropomorphic shaping, especially with the chairs.
CB: In the sculpture “Green Chair”, you have attached an image of a staircase to the back, is that part of that shaping?
SF: Yes, it becomes about treating the whole piece, it was to ensure that it got seen completely 3-dimensionally. In that case, the symbolism. This insular world becoming even more so by taking this path down into the piece. The whole "Nude Descending a Staircase" (M.Duchamp) thing- it's not a clue that most might pick up on but it was amusing for me.
CB: Would you talk about your decision to use the gloves and clothes as signifiers? Also, your choice of one-ness, particularly in what is usually paired, like the hand and the foot.
SF: It's ownership, a gesture, the arm akimbo- kind of defiant. I wanted there to be a history. Those articles of clothing belonged to someone- they are personalized with the glove. The one-ness [is to] spotlight or focus that one part.
CB: Like a vignette or a moment stopped in time?
SF: Yes, like how we see a movie; a hand reaching across the screen, we know there's a body attached but now the hand has other properties too- it's not as if the other doesn't exist. There is an undeniable macabreness about it, but it's a finished cast icon and not just some mystery of a severed foot.
CB: You've chosen to stop the time in such a way that you focus the viewer's attention to ask more questions: why the right foot or...
SF: Exactly. An audience is trying to put it all together- they bring their own experiences and prejudices. And here they can run wild with it, it's rich with symbolism- it's very allowing, I want them to be very meandering in that way- from the Walt Disney dancing cartoon skeletons thing to an academic study of a horse’s anatomy. (“Horse Skeleton” & “Horse Skeleton
with Nude”)
CB: The museum's description in the gallery suggests Pop Art as an influence would you talk more about that?
SF: Part of it was just the time period when I was growing up, that was what I saw- the advertising world, the large format magazines, all of that came into play as Pop Art. Other than historic pieces- it was some of the first art I saw. It was so pervasive, it found its way into magazines, game shows and tv sets.
CB: Was there a piece that has stuck with you over time?
SF: Actually I was working in a student gallery at Cranbrook and I was cleaning an Andy Warhol silkscreen of flowers and I damaged the piece- I think it was an FTD show, it amused me in a sense that all of the work was seen of as being cool and irreverent,... and there I had scrubbed a part of the petal off....
CB: Your show at the Tacoma Art Museum is part of a series of solo shows called "Northwest Perspectives", in what way does the Northwest affect your perspective? How do you see yourself within the context of "an artist of the Northwest"?
SF: Well, certainly there is the physical, the landscape, that sense of regionalism, that is a part of the work, although there is work from Berlin and from Brooklyn, I don't know if I brought the NW to it- a good part of it was built in the west and there are ideas about the west. "Green Chair" and "Hand Axe, Firewood, Baby Ben Clock on Rug" could be identified as Northwestern from the color to the look of being worn and used, it does suggest a cabin-like life- that aspect could be quite literal but it's about the living here, not being preoccupied with the idea of what the NW is about. That piece is about the melancholy of that time, the fire was extinguished, I was leaving for Berlin.
CB: You have lived and worked in many places- internationally and nationally, what are things that you bring back with you from the experience of traveling?
SF: Well, a remarkable overlap that keeps happening- I am still drawing on that, it takes time to digest- “Red Chair” comes right out of Berlin but it was done in Brooklyn- it was connected to the vivid color of the new expressionists, the wild painters. It's as if we're carrying that past with us; adjusting as we go. The work that I was doing there was seen as exotic because it wasn't about what was going on there- which made it much more visible [as it was] out of context.
CB: In visiting a city, do you look at architecture or studio art first?
SF: That's a good question- the architecture from an aerial view is certainly the first thing I notice, then the being surrounded by it - seeing the power that it can have over the people [and] how it projects into the public's realm. With some knowledge of a location's history, I remember the photographs from art history books; now I'm looking to see “in the real”. Maybe it's much stronger than I ever thought it could be- [it can also be] all about the anticipation.
CB: If you were going to give someone a tour of the NW -what would you take them to see?
SF: Of course, there's the new library downtown, the Smith Tower, there's a lot of modernist buildings in the Eastlake neighborhood, that's an interesting pocket. It still retains a sense of the water industry and its commerce. Then there's the harbor itself- the container court, the big boxes, the colors, the cranes, are very sculptural- the names, the port- the exchanging of goods. It makes this place so vital. The Space Needle may be old-hat but it still has significance.
CB: Why did you choose Mies van der Rohe as the architect to create a bust of?
SF: The physical visual of his face - but he was an incredibly important person- the father of Modernism- he had such a huge impact on architecture- coined the term "less is more"- maybe it was a tongue-in-cheek statement… he knew how that could be rearranged. He left Berlin to come here- he wasn't just an Exile, his work became important as well. Initially though, the draw was his face.
CB: And with the juxtaposition of Picasso, who has the added element of the little horns?
SF: With the scale as well, Picasso is smaller, that's funny too. He is mischeivous, obviously a genius- the idea of these two egos side by side- it's not to put Picasso in a lesser position, that he is sprouting these little horns- the horns go all the way back to the Renaissance where they suggested: light, genius, gifted, knowledge- all of that. It gives him a special magicalness; suggesting his own identification with image of the goat. It's these bigger than life people in relationship- they were essentially contemporaries, although Picasso wasn't an Exile.
CB: But they both represented a challenge to that idea of "tradition" and what does it mean to push passed the assumptions of the time and place?
SF: Yes, they were shapers of the 20th century.
| http://www.platformgallery.com/artist_pages/Fife/Fife.html
| I like the physical nature of building the sculpture–it seems very old-fashioned and traditional. The idea of the material itself–it’s friendly, flexible, there’s a glow from in it. I’m the full-service artist–doing it all at the moment. I like the aspect of the low-tech tools that I need to make something like this. In the beginning [it was] an Xacto knife, masking tape and glue–now it’s the screwgun. So that hasn’t changed much at all–the directness of it, that I could begin to shape this, I can make this very plastic without any special process. There is that sense of one person building this thing–it becomes a “feat”–the whole thing isn’t about that but within the world we live in right now, it makes it a kind of tribal ritual piece; the fact that it was done by the human hand. [That] takes people back to the place in their life where they remember pasting things together [and so] understanding the process. They can feel comfortable looking at artwork and they can take it further but it’s approachable, it’s a big dog!" |
EDUCATION
1972 University of Idaho, Bachelors of Architecture
1976Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Bachelor of Art
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007"True Grit," Platform Gallery, Seattle
“Big Trouble: The Idaho Project,” and “Shapers of the Twentieth
Century,” Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (cat.)
2006“Geronimo!,” Tony Wight/Bodybuilder and Sportsman, Chicago, IL
2005“Big Trouble: The Idaho Project,” Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, UT
“Big Trouble: The Idaho Project,” The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane, WA
“I Am What I Am,” Platform Gallery, Seattle
“Heads,” Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, Washington
2004Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma
2003Bodybuilder and Sportman’s Gallery, Chicago
The Evergreen State College Gallery, Olympia, Washington
1999Esther Claypool Gallery, Seattle
1998Butch Blum, Seattle
1997Lead Gallery, Seattle
1996Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Port Angeles, Washington
1994Cornish Art Institute, Seattle
Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho & Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane
1992Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
1991Fuller/Elwood Gallery, Seattle
1990Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1989Fuller/Elwood Gallery, Seattle
1987Ed Kienholz’s Faith, Hope & Charity Gallery, Hope, Idaho
1985Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1979Diane Gilson Gallery, Seattle
1976Olson-Walker Gallery, Seattle
GROUP EXHIBITIONS2007"Beauty is Embarrassing," Western Project, Los Angeles
2007Frida Kahlo: images of an Icon, Tacoma Art Museum2006Art LA with Platform Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Retrospective 20; I, Port Angeles Fine Art Center; Port Angeles, WA
Group Show, Valerie Carberry; Chicago, curated by Tony Wight
Swallow Harder: Selections from the Ben and Aileen Krohn Collection,
Frye Museum Seattle
2005“Nouvelle Nuptials,” San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design
Aqua Art Miami with Platform Gallery, Miami Beach, FL
2004“Seattle Collects,” City of Seattle
2003“Crossroads: New Art from the Northwest,” COCA, Seattle
“Sense of Place,” Prichard Gallery, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID
“Umbrella,” Bumbershoot Exhibit, Seattle
2000Esther Claypool Gallery, Seattle
1998Group Show, “Animals,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1997“Friends of Kienholz,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin and Koln Art Fair
1995“Miracle on 34th Street,” Fremont Arts Council/NW Aids Foundation
“Demolition Party,” The Henry Art Gallery
“Fallen Timber,” Tacoma Art Museum
1994“Die Dritte Dimension” (The Third Dimension), Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1993“American Friends,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin
“Set The Table: Art & Food,”
1992FUEL Gallery, Seattle
1991Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
1990“Radio Sehen,” Kunstverein Slegen
1989The University Art Gallery, Albany, NY
Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1988Discovery Gallery, Long Island, NY
1987Pritchard Gallery, Moscow, Idaho
“10 Jahre Galerie Redmann,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin
“The Inland Empire,” Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco
1987“Materialisation,” Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim
1986“Station Berlin,” Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
1984“5 Amerikanische Kunstler,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1984“Sammlung Stahl,” Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
“12 Meister des Trompe L’oiel,” Galerie Redmann, Berlin
1983“Kunst und Technik,” Museum fur Verkehr und Technik, Berlin
Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.
1982Internationale Kunstmesse, Basel1978 Foster-White Gallery, Seattle
COLLECTIONS
Microsoft, Redmond, Washington
City of Seattle
Swedish Hospital, Seattle,
Safeco Company, Safeco Field, Seattle
The State of Washington
The Tacoma Art Museum
Berlinische Galerie (City of Berlin), Berlin
Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin-Kienholz, Hope, Idaho
Sammlung Froer, Oftersheim, Germany
Mandy and Clifford Einstein, Los Angeles
Sheryl Conkelton and Joseph Newland, Seattle
Klauis und Bisela Groenke, Berlin
Sammlung Stahl, Berlin, Germany
Paul and Roberta K. Thompson, London
Zewawell, Mannheim, Germany
Gordon Walker Architect, Seattle
Karen Weinstein, Los Angeles
Ruth Braunstein, Braunstein Gallery, San Francisco
Hans and Helga Redmann, Berlin
Better Asher, Asher-Faure Gallery, Los Angeles
Helfreid und Elisabeth Gast, Munchen/Baldham
Blue Cross of Southern California, Los Angeles
Beth de Woody, New York
Aileen and Ben Krohn, Seattle
Urs and Annabella Ris, Ascona, Switzerland
Richard Schwartz, Portland, OR |
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