Interview with ED PASCHKE by Victoria Vorreiter 13 May 1998
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Interview with ED PASCHKE By Victoria Vorreiter 13 May 1998 Conversation at Ed Paschke’s Studio 317 Howard Street Evanston, Illinois (Ed Paschke graciously greets me at his studio in Rogers Park, as I offer him a bouquet of yellow tulips. After speaking of mutual friends, the neighborhood where we both live, and the nature of my project, we begin what turns out to be a fascinating – and richly revealing – conversation. Ed is working on a portrait of a classical Grecian woman. Music is playing all the while.) How would you describe yourself professionally? I am primarily a painter, an artist who focuses on painting. I also do drawings, prints. I guess you also say that I have a concern for the human condition. How would you describe your art? Generally my work has a brighter sense of color, a quality of light and illumination that is important to me because it has various symbolic and metaphorical implications about spirituality, about enlightenment and that sort of thing. There's kind of a glowing quality to it. Generally it has something to do with figurative. I also deal with metaphor and symbol, so this generates a combination of various elements or components that collectively add up to something, and you're left to draw your own personal conclusions as to a specific meaning. I try to stimulate. It's confrontational. If you were to describe how other people see your work, or what achievements do you think your peers in your field see? One thing I always try to do and I assume they would respond to this is, it is very well crafted. There is a high degree of professionalism about how they're executed, how they're actually painted. So you may recoil from the subject matter, but you'd have to grudgingly admit they're well put together. There is a fairly uniform response from my peers. What achievements or what work do you find your most significant? You mean professionally? Yes. You mean what stands out on my resume? Well, what are you most personally proud of? Not somebody else's standards. I had a retrospective exhibition that began at the Pompidou Center in Paris and went to the Dallas Art Museum and then wound up here at the Art Institute of Chicago. So that's a major museum showing. When was that? It was 1990. In Paris the show was actually in 1989. In December it went to Dallas and then here in fall 1990. And you show in galleries here in Chicago and around the country? Right. And you teach? Yeah. I'm a professor at Northwestern. I'm looking at sound in your environment as you work. So we would say that you would work in a city setting and this is your studio. Do you work exclusively here? Ah, I'd say 98%, 95%. There are times when I do multiples. I go to other sites to do those. What is a multiple? A painting or drawing is one of a kind, so if you do a lithograph, an etching or a silk screen, whatever, there is more than one, a multiple. The number of the multiples can vary. The lowest number of a multiple is 3 and in some cases you might do 50 or 60 of a particular thing. When you make a print, this involves printing presses. You have to go to the facility when they make these things. There's a recent thing I did. I can show you in the next room. It's kind of a digital, electronic kind of a thing done with a computer and you have to go where they have the technology. Kind of a technological laboratory to make those things. I have a little area in my home where I do drawings. But most of the time, about 98% of the time, I'm here. Do you ever work outside? Out there? Yeah. On location? Yeah, I mean, do you ever go to the countryside? Well, yeah I mean I take trips and things like that, but I normally don't do work there. I might have an idea and I might have a sketch-like reaction to the idea and record it, so I can bring it back here. How would you describe the prevalent sounds in your work environment? Well, first of all there's the sounds of the street. We're right here by the end of the CTA line and bus line terminal and all that stuff. You hear the train, you hear traffic in the street, you hear busses making the turns all the time, your hear people yelling. Especially in this neighborhood! Yeah, it's a very ethnically, racially mixed area of the city, so you hear different languages being spoken. It's a truly international flavor on the street. And then there's a sound inside the studio. I'm generally listening to - it's either public radio, or music of one sort or another. But I like to have sound on when I'm working. It somehow transports me to a different place in my mind and, it allows for a less focused view of my work. It takes part of my brain away. (The phone rings.) So you were saying that you like sound in your environment because it keeps you less focused so intensely on your work. Well, o.k., like the phone just rang, right? Many times, when I'm on the phone, that is another sound, right? When I'm on the phone I'll be talking to somebody, but I'll be looking around my room and looking at many of the paintings I've just been working on and I'll see it in a different way. Because part of my mind is involved in the phone conversation. The illustration I always give is this: when I was drafted in the army years ago, they give you these classes when you first get in the army in how to do different things and one of these classes was how to see in the dark to shoot somebody. But the thing is, the way the eye works, it's very dark and you're trying to see a particular spot if you look directly at where you hear the sound, if you look directly at where the sound came from, you won't be able to see it. But if you look around it or nearby, this peripheral vision thing happens, and you can see it more clearly when you're looking nearby, but not directly at it. So getting back to the painting again, if I'm staring down a painting trying to figure out what to do, the thought may be a little bit clouded. There's too many issues going on. But if I'm on the phone, the distraction of the phone conversation will sometimes give me the objectivity that I'm looking for and maybe in a related vein, listening to music while I work is the way to fragment my focus. So, the next question is interesting. Are you attentive to the sounds? I mean, are you conscious of them or would you say it kind of becomes a musical wallpaper or sound wallpaper? Well, both in fact. It can be kind of a wallpaper thing, like for instance, an album like this I listen to many, many times and I like it and it gives me a certain kind of energy that I find useful and it translates into the work. But having listened to it may times, I'm not as acutely focused on every aspect of it, whereas if I'm hearing something for the first time, there's more a likelihood that I will be focused on it in a different way. So you're quite happy in this street sound environment? I mean, would you have it any other way, if you were to go into the countryside, where it's completely natural sounds? I think I'd have a problem with that. Do you think that's become habituated? Are you a city person? Yeah, I think for the most part. Well, if you look around the studio here, there's a lot of things that I put up just for visual stimulation. So we're talking about auditory stimulation. And I think that in a way. o.k., maybe this is the primary thing we're going for here. To me, the artist is a kind of filtration system, right, and that filter, you're processing your life, o.k. You're processing the raw ingredients of your life whether they're visual things or auditory things. And certain things get lodged in the filter and these are the things that you process and that art is made of. So it's kind of an accumulation of the visual and auditory and the touching senses? All the senses, sure. So in other words, if I were in a sensory depravation tank, it would just be a matter of time before my reservoir would go dry. Do they ever distract you? Well, I mean, there are times when they're sometimes in conflict, but when I'm, listening, some subtle piece of information is about to come down in an interview or public radio and a truck goes by and I couldn't hear a few words. That's the price you pay. So, if I were to say sound is very important to you. ? Yes, very important.