Meredith Sellers
Volume: Where do you live / where do you work?
Meredith Sellers: I live in Philadelphia, on North Broad Street, just south of Temple’s campus. It’s a strange kind of no-man’s land sprinkled with abandoned buildings and empty lots that are now being developed at breakneck speed. I always liked how it was this little pocket that felt sort of desolate and Lynchian, even though it’s just nine blocks North of City Hall. I recently moved my studio to Port Richmond, which took a little getting used to, but I’m enjoying the pierogies!
Volume: Can you give a quick description of your work space?
Sellers: My work space is split between my partner, Jonathan Santoro, and me. It’s an old school building, so our studio used to be a classroom. There’s something I love about working in the space, it has a feeling of comfort and familiarity that you don’t get in your typical converted industrial space studio. I have a very large desk, which is essential for “thinking room,” and a long wall that I cover with foamcore so I can attain a perfectly smooth surface in my drawings.
Volume: What's your day to day studio schedule like?
Sellers: I go to the studio generally about twice a week, more if I’m on a deadline. Jonathan and I typically go together every weekend, and one week night. It takes me a while to feel settled in a space, and I’ll often spend the first hour or so reading or writing before I start working. Art is a huge part of my life everyday, and I’ve set up my facebook feed so that I see websites like Contemporary Art Daily and Art Viewer first every morning. It sort of centers me, and lets me take a quick look at things that are trending and ideas that are important in art at this moment. I am constantly reading about art, collecting images, and doing every day art research. I also frequently stop to take pictures of windows or displays while I’m walking. I consider all of this equally important to the time spent physically in the studio.
Volume: Whose work have you been looking at lately?
Sellers: In the past few years there’s been a wave of younger painters who are working with ideas of mediated representation, and are playing with a flattening of the image in a way that references an amalgamating of images, or a screen. Jamian Juliano-Villani is a master of this. I also look at artists like Avery Singer, Louisa Gagliardi, Sascha Braunig, Melanie Ebenhoch, Victor Man, Sayer Gomez, Jordan Kasey, and David Korty. I see this trend as the inheritance of the image-based sensibility of some of my favorite artists, like Ed Ruscha, R.B. Kitaj, Vija Celmins, R.H. Quaytman, and Gertrude Abercrombie.
I look at a lot of art historical painting as well, and recently I’ve been influenced by Piero Della Francesca and other early Renaissance paintings. I really love the ones that have a slightly-less-than-perfect understanding of perspective, because I think it speaks to something inherent in the flaws in human perception.
Volume: What museums or galleries do you visit regularly?
Sellers: I’m a writer for the art criticism blog Hyperallergic, and I recently took on an editorial role with Title Magazine here in Philly, so I try to keep abreast of what’s going on and I go to a lot of spaces in Philly with regularity. I always go to ICA openings, and openings at High Tide, which has been doing some really interesting things. Rosenwald-Wolf at UArts presents some of the best shows in the city. Kamahira, Pilot Projects, and, recently, Fleisher Ollman have all been showing some great, young local artists. I think Ryan McCartney and Tim Belknap have presented some really great projects at the Icebox, and I usually to first Fridays at the 319 Building.
It’s heartening to me to see Philadelphia moving away from a self-showing collective model, which creates an incredibly closed, insular, and solipsistic gallery system, where it becomes very difficult to show if you’re not willing to “pay to play.” I think curatorial collectives and apartment galleries are the only ways to move to the conversation forward, to expose Philadelphia to artists from other places, and vice versa.
Volume: What was the last show you saw in person that impacted your work?
Sellers: Matt Freedman’s show “Slapstick” at Fjord. Matt was the only professor I worked with in grad school that I felt really supported my work. I hadn’t seen much of his work in person until the show at Fjord, but it made so much sense why Matt had been interested in what I was doing. His objects, like mine, function almost like props, but have a loose, provisional quality that I struggle to achieve. I especially love his painted backdrop, which covers every wall with imagery appropriated from the “Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner” cartoons.
I also recently saw Sascha Braunig’s show at PS1, which was incredible, and Mark Leckey’s show, which I hated. It was totally vapid, deeply patronizing, and totally didactic, with the artist literally speaking in your ear as you walk through one of the galleries. I think figuring out why you hate work can sometimes be as important as seeing work that reinforces your practice.
Volume: What do you do when you're not working, and how does that impact the artwork that you make...? What influences your practice outside of the studio? (non-art related influences)
Sellers: I watch a lot of films, I especially love silent film, and early experimental cinema like Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet and Orpheus. Films like that have heavily influenced video projects I’ve done in the past. Because they were made before digital effects and gigantic budgets, they make me feel like anything is possible if you can just find the time. They have a handmade quality that requires a certain suspension of belief, which I find really intriguing. I also love Pedro Almodovar. His films have an atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, and the color is unlike any you’ll ever see in American cinema. I have an annoying habit of taking screenshots of films I’m watching that sometimes become references in my paintings.
Volume: Any upcoming projects or residencies in the near future?
Sellers: I have an upcoming solo show at Black Oak House gallery, and a show slated for the fall at Pilot Projects with Jonathan. We will be building a sort of theater set and curating a few performers to interact with it. I’m making backdrops and he is making furniture. We’ve done several collaborative projects together, which have all referenced film or stage sets, but this is the first where the promise will be fulfilled and we’ll actually be working with performers, I’m really excited about it.
Artist Information:
Website: meredithsellers.com
IG: @mmerde