We were lucky to catch up with Christopher Squier recently and have shared our conversation below.
Christopher, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been one of the most interesting investments you’ve made – and did you win or lose? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)
My collection of books, which includes fiction, biography, and theory, exhibition catalogs, old textbooks, artist objects and ephemera, vinyl collections of atmospheric music for when I work, and so many random things picked up in life. It has definitely been an investment in time, money, and back pain! I continue to lug all these wonderful things around with me, always thinking there will be a time when I’ll want to pull on that one very particular thing for a project or a new idea.
There’s a quote from Borges on one of my tote bags which says “I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books,” which is absolutely true, but I also feel that I’m at risk of becoming the character from W. Somerset Maugham’s short story who’s become completely dependent on his collection, hauling a giant laundry bag of books behind him throughout his assignments in the Pacific Rim!
As I just finished moving apartments, I can attest that the sheer volume of my library makes this one of my best yet worst investments I’ve made, and one which will stay with me for quite some time. Most everything is hiding in boxes at the moment, but a few important things are already on my shelves — an electric green Hiroshi Yoshimura record featuring a closely-cropped image of a Christmas cactus on the jacket, which I often play while drawing, a monograph by Roni Horn which features one of my favorite artworks about our complex cultural relationship with bodies of water (<i>Still Water [The River Thames, for Example]</i>, 1999), a series of extraordinary and surprisingly sumptuous photographs by Todd Webb of Georgia O’Keeffe’s austere life in Abiquiú, NM, and a series of miniature books measuring two to three inches tall, which were crucial references for a recent publishing project.
Christopher, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been making things as a visual artist as long as I can recall, long before I attended art school and honed in on the particular processes and techniques I use today. Cleaning out my parents’ garage recently, I found a drawing of a cat I made when I was very young. It’s standing upright like a person and its face is geometric, constructed from a series of interlocking circles and vertical lines. The ears are stiff like pieces of toast and its whiskers are lopsided, yet it’s an extremely potent image. My parents always saved everything I made, even the things they probably shouldn’t have, and I think it’s part of what led me to working as a professional artist. I always had to think carefully about what I made because it would always be around!
I remember as a kid I was always making. On a trip to one of the lakes in Minnesota, I remember the thrill of making small arrangements out of bits of moss, pine cones, twigs, and fallen leaves. They looked like miniature landscapes. I kept them in Tupperware containers or maybe in glass jars. After the week was over, I had to throw them all out, and doing this somehow kept the magic alive. By letting them go, it made space for making the next thing.
Flash forward twenty five years later and I’m still making, but as an artist living and working in New York. I pursued degrees in art at Grinnell College in Iowa and the San Francisco Art Institute and, since then, I’ve spent almost a decade working with other artists and their archives at galleries, studios, and educational institutions, which has given me a profound appreciation for the endless different ways of making and thinking about art. I took part in a number of residencies in the U.S. and around the globe, from Shanghai to Barcelona and two remote villages in Norway. My work has been collected and is in a number of archives, including the Prague Gallery for Czech Glass and the Expatriate Archive Centre at The Hague.
My recent work revolves around the experience and science of optics, how light and vision interact and always seem to resist simple explanation. I like playing with visibility in my work, whether as a conceptual idea or in the actual materials and treatment of surfaces in the work. A recent series encased graphite drawings beneath black-tinted glass, effectively hiding the drawing from sight. How do we show up within society and play trickster to power, lie low and embrace the shadows and half-light, or demand our “right to opacity,” as Glissant writes?
In San Francisco, I created a series of text works on glass with frosted and transparent surfaces which lift slogans from an absurdist, yet politically very concrete, political movement that arose in Novosibirsk, Russia, around 2015. These slogans appeared on hand-drawn signs in joyful marches termed Monstratsiya, a variation on the word “demonstration.” They briefly went viral online, spreading to cities throughout Russia until political repression and COVID forced them to disband. The use of absurdist humor and the resistance to discussing policy allowed the participants to create community and practice the right of assembly. I memorialized the text snippets of the marchers on glass, which is both a very strong and very fragile material, and used opacity and transparency to delineate the words, in part because the spirit of the messages seemed to be very sly and slippery in the first place. The demonstrators were showing up, but not saying anything. Or rather, saying a lot by saying something that made no legible sense to the authorities. It was a stroke of genius. And besides, I think everyone should keep an apolitical slogan somewhere in their home or office to inspire us not to be too rigid in our beliefs, and to remain playful.
I made other works about light and visibility while in San Francisco, including a series about the bizarre science behind lighthouse lenses, called Fresnel lenses, which were a wartime invention that came out of the revolutions and reactions to revolution in France, and all the political changes which helped push out the old scientific guard and usher in a new one. I was making work out of these incredible art studios at a former military base in Marin, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and was surrounded by the sound of waves and foghorns and a preponderance of oceanic imagery. There were three nearby lighthouses, at Alcatraz, Point Bonita, and Point Arena, which I visited and photographed. Even though lighthouse design is based on the very simple form of a cylinder, each encounter with their architecture is striking, and the rounded stairwells and extreme elongation of the tower does something physical to the visitor—especially once you’re out on an isolated, rocky point of land where things already feel a little surreal. I found that experience interesting on a perceptual level. I used the photographs as the basis for textile installations, fiberglass sculptures, and drawings, and I even organized a four-part contemporary ballet performance with the dancer Syd Devine for the San Francisco International Arts Festival, which took inspiration from the motion, light patterns, and cultural history of the lighthouse at Alcatraz.
At the current moment, I mostly make drawings exploring the idea of light’s dual nature as a wave and particle. I’ve become particularly fascinated with an old science experiment from physics classrooms called the ripple tank experiment, which visualizes light wave interference through a tank of water. The tank is outfitted with mechanical metal prongs, which move at variable speeds and create ripples. There’s something hypnotic about the experiment and the moire patterns and moments of activity and stasis that occur, a feeling which I hope translates in my drawings. I started the series by thinking about the constructed notion of interference in a political context back in 2019, wondering how any situation in reality could not involve some degree of interference or, to use another word, interaction. The concept of a vacuum in which we are not swayed or spoken to seemed categorically false, so I began drawing the physical process of interference to explore this sort-of mythological paradox. I enjoyed seeing the patterns that interference produced, which in a way is at the core of the human experiences of socializing, conversing, and interacting with others. I’ve been making variations on this idea for the past five years now.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I remember finding Phonebook from threewalls indispensable to understanding the ins and outs of the arts economy when I graduated from college. They offered definitions for the art world’s obtuse arrangement of responsibilities and gatekeepers, and a directory to its independent art spaces and the different roles required to operate them. There was also a series of useful essays and reflections by arts nonprofit directors. I had Phonebook 3, which came out in 2011, and I wish there was an updated edition of the series aimed at today’s arts landscape!
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
It’s very difficult to set a framework for what artists should do or should make, how that should manifest as a product, experience, or commercial offering. We’re all making in extremely distinct and changeable ways and, after all, the freedom to choose our own adventure is still one of the joys of being an artist.
That said, the freedom to act has slipped into a sense of being undervalued by our society. In 2021, I received a significant grant from the New York City Artists Corps which supported me in making new drawings and video work and presenting a talk at a terrific bookstore just off Bowery called Bungee Space. I was still a relative newcomer to New York and the support felt crucial to my decision to stay here. It was more than the funds, which I needed at that point. It provided a sense of welcome and belonging.
I was not alone in receiving the grant, which included $25 million for over 3,000 working artists. It felt like a significant boost to see funds allocated to so many emerging artists rather than just the top award winners and short lists. Experiments in unrestricted gifts to larger groups of artists and guaranteed basic income grants are so important for nurturing artists and supporting a community of creatives.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.squier.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio_squier/
Image Credits
Portrait: Xiao Wang Artwork: Christopher Squier