


Sul-Jee Scully, Cheez Hand, 2016, acrylic, flashe, tape, and painted paper on linen over panel, 36″ x 48″




 
Sul-Jee Scully, Cheez Hand, 2016, acrylic, flashe, tape, and painted paper on linen over panel, 36″ x 48″
Sara Rahbar, Flag #1, 2006
David Hammons, African American Flag, 1990. Printed fabric, 19 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.
Jasper Johns, Green Flag, 1969, Lithograph, 20 1/2 x 28 9/16 in.
Faith Ringgold, The Flag is Bleeding #2, 1997. Acrylic on canvas, 76 x 79.5 in.
Roy Lichtenstein, Forms In Space, 1985. Screenprint on Rives BFK paper, 31 x 42 in.
Roller rinks always had the best candy. I remember spitting out a florescent green blob of bubblegum covered in saliva into the palm of my hand at a 5th grade birthday party. I would then stretch that glob just as far as I possibly could, until inevitably it met its threshold. Bubblegum is childhood. It is that awkward little place in between needing your parents around you to survive, and well not really needing them anymore. It’s a transition, a threshold, a boundary – a place in time where you test those transitions. A boundary is a useful fiction that helps us to navigate society, but when tested it has the potential to change our understanding of the two areas that it divides.
Darcie Book does this with her paintings. She begins by methodically pouring latex paint onto plastic sheeting. There is a delicate balance between submitting to the fluidity of paint and attempting to control the image. She then waits for the paint to dry and peels it off the sheeting, using it like a skin. The skin’s shiny surface appears wet, and you can feel the movement of the oozing paint, frozen in time. She manipulates the skin like a stiff fabric into sculptural forms. The skin is everything – the image, the substrate, and the support of the painting. Some of her works are more sculptural, while others surrender to a traditional square frame, causing viewers to question boundaries of painting, of sculpture, of movement, of time.
Darcie Book (Baltimore, MD) is a painter and installation artist whose work explores paint as object and architecture through the use of innovative processes centered on the unique properties of latex paint. She was selected as a finalist for the 2016 Sondheim Prize with a corresponding exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and was featured in GOOD AND PLENTY, curated by Cynthia Connelly at School 33 Art Center in 2016. Book attended the Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency in April 2015, and was offered a grant to attend the Can Serrat Artist Residency in Montserrat, Spain in 2016 (acceptance of offer pending). In 2017, she was selected by the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development to receive an unsolicited Individual Grant for achievement in the arts and humanities.
Book’s work has been featured in exhibitions locally and nationally including Manifest Gallery’s FRESH PAINT Biennial (Cincinnati, OH, 2015) and the Maryland Artist Registry Juried Exhibition at Maryland Art Place (Baltimore, MD, 2016) as well as at The Mitchell Gallery (Annapolis, MD, 2013), Samson Gallery (Boston, MA, 2011), Current Gallery (Baltimore, MD, 2005, 2011), Metro Gallery (2012), School 33 Art Center (Baltimore, MD, 2003, 2011, 2016), The Art Barn Gallery (Santa Fe, NM, 2003) and The Contemporary Museum (Baltimore, MD, 2003).
Her exhibitions have been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, and the Baltimore City Paper. Her work has been featured on a number of esteemed blogs. Book has had three solo exhibitions in Baltimore, MD, including Borderlands at the Hamilton Gallery (2013). Her work is displayed in collections in Ireland and Nigeria as well as across the United States. Book is a founding member of A.M. Art Collective (est. 2011) and a core member of the Bmore Critique Group (est. 2016). She received her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004.
With Love from the Manicured Lawn, 2016, Oil and marble dust on linen, 11 in. X 24 in.
In lieu of testimony: No. 1, 2015, oil and marble dust on panel, 24 in. X 24 in.
In lieu of testimony: No. 2, 2016, Oil and marble dust on panel
They’re Still Here. 2016, Oil and wax on shellacked paper, 18 in. X 23 in.
Anna Buckner
I recently finished the last lemon in my fridge and casually tossed the yellow, plastic mesh sack in the trash. Unburdened by the weight of the fruit, the sack adopted its own shape, catching the light in some places and creating value variations where it doubled over. I took the sack out of the trash and pinned it on the wall alongside paintings by Greg Burak and Maddy Winter. On the wall the sack had transformed – undistracted by its utility, I could recognize the intricacies of the mesh and the subtlety of color.
This is what I love about Chryum Lambert’s work. There is uncertainty in his process, imagery and even medium – but it is simultaneously as familiar as a lemon sack. With uncertainty comes awareness. We look more closely. Notice more. Chyrum’s works are perfectly unresolved, and that’s precisely why they are so stirring.
Because I know a lot of readers are interested in talking shop, I’m going to share an excerpt from an email exchange I had with Chyrum. You’re welcome.
I get asked about my process often as it can be hard to tell from photos of my work just how they’re made. I work primarily on paper that’s been mounted to wooden panels(that I construct myself). I paint- using acrylic, oil, dye, ink wash, wax, onto large sheets of paper or fabric(muslin, cotton, denim). The paper/fabric is then cut, rearranged, and adhered onto the panels. So really the process of painting and the process of composing the images have been completely separated whereas in a more traditional painting approach these processes are one and the same. And I work in two different studios, one for each process, so the painting process never really gets involved in the compositional process and vice versa. I paint a lot and have quite the backlog of colors and textures, some are years old before I finally get around to using them in a composition, so the rediscovery of the shapes I cut out of the abstracted paintings make the process more like I am uncovering something new and not necessarily from myself. This helps I think in that I’m looking at the material I’m using with relatively fresh eyes. Makes me look harder at my own process.
Self-taught, Chyrum Lambert, lives and works in LA. His work is featured on Grizzly Bear’s newest album, Painted Ruins, to be released in August. This seems like a marriage that could last. Like Grizzly Bear, Chryum’s compositions are painstakingly detailed, yet effortless and full of emotion. Both gorgeous on the surface and rich with surprises as you dive deeper. And I’m diving.
Swimmer
2015
40 x 52 inches
ink wash, acrylic paint, pencil, collage material, hand painted, cut, and adhered onto an 80 lb cover sheet
Parts And Labor ( YES WE CAN )
2014
40 x 26 inches
ink wash, oil paint, wax,
acrylic paint, pencil, rit dye, rust wash, hand painted, cut, and adhered onto an 80 lb cover sheet
Diapsalmata
2014
26 x 40 inches
ink wash, pencil,
acrylic paint, rit dye, hand painted, cut, and adhered onto an 80 lb cover sheet
Towards Our Bathroom Mirror, A Fang Is Growing
2015
26 x 40 inches
ink wash, acrylic paint, pencil, dye, muslin, wax, hand painted, cut, and adhered onto an 80 lb cover sheet
Anna Buckner
I always feel a little guilty asking artists to write a haiku about their work. Hey! You’ve worked really hard to create this great body of work – now write a short poem about it. Alas, I did it again – it’s hard to stop demanding haiku when y’all keep showing up! Here’s one from Madeline Gallucci.
Madeline’s paintings are camouflaged depictions of digital fragments – the debris left over from our daily flood of imagery. A snapchat squiggle here, spray painted scribbles there, they are her stories, her daily flood. But the effect is universal. We all experience this flood, but rarely do we think about what’s left behind.
Madeline Gallucci received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2012 and has since shown both locally and nationally and has been awarded local residencies through Charlotte Street Foundation and Hotel Phillips as well as national residencies in San Fransisco and Grinnell, IA. Madeline Gallucci is a recipient of the 2016 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award and is currently represented by Weinberger Fine Art in Kansas City, MO.
You can check out more of her work on her website and instagram!
Anna Buckner
Amber Vittoria is an illustrator living and working in New York City. Really I should be posting this on a Wednesday – because WOAH can we talk about a serious WOMAN CRUSH? But also just a woman who is CRUSHING it – her illustrations have been featured in It’s Nice That, Man Repeller, and Teen Vogue. Thanks to Amber for sharing your beautiful work with Command Zine and taking the time for this interview!
#RexythecoachDino
(AB) Your subjects are simultaneously serious and lighthearted. Who are these women? How does humor play into your work?
(AV) Majority of the inspiration pulls from women I know, women I see on the subway, on the bus, in line for lunch, online, etc. Because of this, the natural balance of humor and pointedness finds its way into my work.