Art Together // Ethan Hayes-Chute

I am very excit­ed to share the lat­est install­ment of Art Togeth­er, a col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­view. It works like this: I cre­ate a piece of work and then mail it to the par­tic­i­pat­ing artist. They, in turn, respond to it some how– this could be: adding, sub­tract­ing, cut­ting, past­ing, paint­ing. What­ever they see fit to what I’ve start­ed. After that, I write some ques­tions based on our collaboration. 

Ethan Hayes-Chute was an artist that I met while at the Ver­mont Stu­dio Cen­ter last fall. Always up for an adven­ture, Ethan was a lot of fun to get to know, and I’m real­ly hap­py that he was able to par­tic­i­pate in this with me! 

With­out fur­ther ado, here is the piece I sent Ethan: 

And, here is what he sent back to me: 

First­ly, have you done any explor­ing recently?

I spent near­ly three months this win­ter in Ice­land, on the east coast at an artists res­i­den­cy pro­gram (www.skaftfell.is), and there was a bit of explor­ing going on there. Win­tery weath­er and lack of access to a car stymied that a bit, but I still saw some great things. I plan to swing by Ice­land again for a bit this sum­mer. I’m also going to be explor­ing a bit of the west coast of Nor­way in a few weeks, and hope­ful­ly I’ll be able to be a bit more mobile there- though I’ll be pret­ty busy, so per­haps that’s a bit over­ly optimistic. 

How was the deci­sion made to respond to my piece with some­thing a bit less abstract?

Well, indeed, I don’t real­ly work abstract­ly, at least not late­ly, but I want­ed to make some­thing that tied into what I am work­ing on now. I tried out a few more solu­tions before I set­tled on what I end­ed up with, some more abstract. A few were aban­doned most­ly on a mate­r­i­al lev­el, mean­ing I did­n’t have access to the right media to do what I ini­tial­ly want­ed while I was work­ing on this in Iceland. 

(The fol­low­ing images cour­tesy of Ethan.)

“Home­stead (Turn­buck­le) ” Graphite on Paper, 15 x 10.5 cm, 2010


“Home­stead (One Chan­nel)” Graphite on Paper, 15 x 10.5 cm, 2010

Do you see our pieces as hav­ing a con­tin­u­ing nar­ra­tive? Do you think they exist in the same world?

I do. What I saw in your piece was some sort of storm, per­haps envelop­ing, or shroud­ing, the scene I even­tu­al­ly pulled out of it. When the storm died down, you were able to see what it had been cov­er­ing up. 

“Sug­gest­ed Worm­house” Graphite on Paper, 7.5 x 10.5 cm, 2010

Your piece has a feel­ing of des­per­a­tion — depres­sion, Grapes of Wrath feel to it. Is this a theme you see in your oth­er work?

Cer­tain­ly, I was­n’t sure what to expect, but I sup­pose I was a bit tak­en aback at the loose­ness of it- At first I had a hard time think­ing what I could do oth­er than use it as a back­ground for some­thing else. I looked fur­ther, of course, and found some shapes and forms that I respond­ed to. The stitch­ing imme­di­ate­ly brought to mind an old nee­dle-point that was always in the bed­room I slept in at my grand­par­ents’ house. I think my mom made it when she was young. It was of an old wood­en post stick­ing out of the ground, with grass­es and weeds around it –I need to ask where that end­ed up– I knew I want­ed to use your care­ful stitch­ing in my response; the col­ors evoked wood and boards, as well as those dried weeds in my mom’s nee­dle-point. I also respond­ed quick­ly to this tri­an­gle-shaped por­tion you stitched, on the left hand side. It remind­ed me of a bulk­head used to get down into a cel­lar, and I knew I was going to incor­po­rate that as well. The col­ors of paint you used are also famil­iar to me, so I decid­ed to take those mate­ri­als, forms and col­ors out (in the case of the stitch­ing, lit­er­al­ly) of the orig­i­nal piece and incor­po­rate them into a new piece. I had start­ed sketch­ing out some things on this old piece of paper and left it on my desk for a few days. Appar­ent­ly there was an oily spot on the desk and it soaked into the paper. The splotch was rem­i­nis­cent of the stitched shapes you had made on the orig­i­nal piece, so I decid­ed to con­tin­ue with that paper. The oily splotch­es act­ed as a marshy area for the thread-plants to grow in. I imag­ined that the struc­ture I drew has a cel­lar- and that enter­ing through the bulk­head is the only way into the rest of the house as well. The small peb­bles lit­ter­ing the scene are paint­ed, matched from var­i­ous col­ors in the back­ground, and there are two col­laged ones, cut from the purple‑y col­or you had col­lage into the piece. 

“went to get wood” Wood, found objects, 300 x 250 x 260 cm, 2008

Your body of work involves a lot of dif­fer­ent liv­ing spaces. Some are 2D, but you con­struct oth­er spaces as well. What draws you to this? Do you think your trav­els influ­ence the way you think about home and struc­ture, both lit­er­al­ly and figuratively?

I’ve got­ten very inter­est­ed in the idea of some­one build­ing their habi­ta­tion the way they want it to be- not sim­ply con­tent with mov­ing into a pre-designed space. I imag­ine peo­ple who have decid­ed to start from scratch, using their own ideas of what a house or a home should be, and inves­ti­gat­ing what pos­si­ble forms may come up as a result. I sup­pose my trav­els must have influ­ence in such ideas, but they also do make me go back and think about how it is ‘back home’ and I find I recen­ter my thoughts on those ideas and struc­tures. My draw­ings, which I view as stand-alone works, but also as ‘sketch­es’ for 3D struc­tures I’d like to build as well. In many ways I wish I could be sim­ply liv­ing the life these build­ings are cre­at­ed for, but that might also way-lay my inves­ti­ga­tions into oth­er struc­tures and archi­tec­tur­al inter­pre­ta­tions. That is, unless I can get a big tract of land and build my own town on it. 

“Frag­ment­ed Cab­in Study in 1:10 scale” wood, paper, plas­tic, met­al, fab­ric, foam, paint, 15 x 14 x 2 cm, 2010

Art-wise, what’s on the hori­zon for you?

From April till July I’ll be artist-in-res­i­dence in Nor­way at the NORDISK KUNSTNARSENTER DALSÅSEN (nkdale.no), which I am look­ing for­ward to great­ly, and while I am there, I’ll have a solo-show in May and June in Bergen, Nor­way at a great space called Entreé, where I’ll make a ful­ly-inter­ac­tive cab­in struc­ture, fur­ther­ing the ideas of anoth­er piece I did a few years ago in Berlin, went to get wood. (http://entree-visningsrom.blogspot.com)

Also in May, I’m show­ing a selec­tion of draw­ings from my series “Sev­er­al Exam­ples of Home­steading” at Mai­son des Arts, Malakoff, France in a group show with some great artists themed around the idea of hous­es and homes. (http://maisondesarts.malakoff.fr/ )

After all that, I’ll have a show in August at the Cen­ter for Maine Con­tem­po­rary Art in Rock­port, Maine which will fea­ture draw­ings and instal­la­tions through out the build­ing, a con­vert­ed barn and fire sta­tion. It’s a great space and insti­tu­tion, so I can’t wait. (http://cmcanow.org/)

Thank you, Ethan!