16 | Artist profile: Agnieszka Gasparska

LEFT: A Woman’s Lifetime, 2023, Ink on paper, 26 x 21.75”

RIGHT: A Man’s Lifetime, 2023, Ink on paper, 26 x 21.75”

What part of the country / world did you grow up?
I was born in Warsaw, Poland where I spent the first eleven years of my life. When I was in sixth grade, my parents, my brother and I landed in New York City, which has been my primary home since. So I would say that I grew up in both Warsaw and New York – both places shaped me from a young age. 

Is there an experience that reverberates in the work?
It is tricky to pull out just one – there are so many experiences that weave into the shape that my work happens to hold in this moment. That said, this most recent body of work was undeniably catalyzed by the death of my father three years ago. I had started moving deeper into my art practice a couple of years prior, but in the weeks following his passing the practice became so much more profound, so much more necessary, and so much more alive. When my father died, even though he had been declining for some time, everything felt so surreal. It was December 2020, the whole year had felt surreal, and I found myself deeply needing to find some kind of ground – in myself, in movement, in sitting still. I also needed something to do – something to do with my hands, something to do with all that I was feeling, with all that I was not feeling, with the time I had, and the time I had lost. So I channelled it into drawing. I sat, I listened to music, and I counted. Over and over and over again. I let each mark flow from one to the next, not knowing how it would end, and one mark, one dot, one step at a time, these beautiful, ethereal forms were born.

You currently live in New York and spend time in New Mexico – how did you end up in those two places? I fell madly in love with northern New Mexico when I took a month-long break during a very intense chapter of my New York City life back in 2014 and I came out to wander and explore a place I knew nothing about. People I met kept asking me what I was doing, and the only answer that made sense at the time was that I was just “being” for a while. Almost every year since, one layer of synchronicity after another kept bringing me back for short visits, and when the world changed in 2020 and working remotely became less of an anomaly in our lives, I started experimenting with spending several months out of the year in New Mexico. Thanks to the above-mentioned synchronicities, places to stay started to materialize and for the last two years I’ve come back to the same spot I love where I continue to squirrel away more and more of my things.  

Are there specific areas of New Mexico that you gravitate to?
Over the years I’ve spent time in various areas north of Santa Fe, gravitating toward tiny towns and wild, out of the way places. Coming from New York, the contrast of land and sky stretching as far as the eye can see, hearing coyotes howling out the back door, and having the nearest grocery store far beyond any reasonable walking distance, is what drew me to these places. There is New York, population 8.46 million, and then there is a desert village with a population of 150 – this contrast is precisely what I love and what my soul craves. My spirit needs both ends of the spectrum, both extremes. I have always been fascinated and inspired by polarities, dualities, dichotomies and paradoxes. I embody many within myself and they fuel me and my work. And I love how these two different environments affect and influence my work, how the work changes depending on where I am. 

LEFT: Emotional Landscape, 2023, charcoal, pastel & ink on paper, 21 9/16 x 30”. 

CENTER + RIGHT: Process.

Can you share about your design firm KMIP? What projects are you excited about?

Kiss Me I’m Polish is a visual design studio which turns 20 years old this year – I can’t even believe it. I started the business to be able to do the work I wanted to do, to not be pigeon-holed as one type of visual designer specializing in X, Y or Z – and to be able to pick and choose the clients I work with. And it has been such an wild and amazing ride over the last 20 years. And it’s been hard, and it’s been intense, and right now it’s pretty darn wonderful. We are a small team and we work with a really diverse range of clients on bringing their vision or their story or their unique content offering to life – visually, and also conceptually. At this very moment we are working on digital education initiatives with a music organization, environmental graphics for a media company, a cultural app prototype, a place-based history website, branding for a new bookstore, and a new online exhibition for a historical institute. Every project requires something unique, every project reveals something new, every project is unlike any other project we’ve done before. Historically, a lot of our work has also focused on information design and data visualization so it’s perhaps also not a coincidence that visualizing abstract and complex concepts is such a present thread in my art work. 

How do you balance an art practice and a design business?

It’s those dualities again. The two are not always in perfect balance, or the kind of balance that my mind would like, but they do find a way to flow together, side by side. I don’t follow any kind of pre-set schedule or structure – part of me wishes I did, but anytime I’ve tried to, it just simply didn’t work. Each week and each day, has a different flow, different deadlines, different characteristics, and so the flow is the structure. There are days when I can spend the first part of the day creating and exploring in the flow of my art practice, and then the afternoon is devoted to the business and design work. There are days where it’s the opposite – design work in the morning and creative time in the afternoon and/or evening. And there are days where it’s all of one and none of the other. Because the business is client based, the struggle there is that its needs and its deadlines can sometimes take precedence over the sometimes less tangible and often less loud needs of the creative practice, but over time that has become less and less of an issue as the art practice gets stronger and stronger and its deadlines and needs are getting louder and louder. And when things are really flowing well, I find that my art practice and my design business even speak to each other and influence each other, which is always interesting in surprising and wonderful ways. 

Your Instagram handle and website are sublime/ordinary – what does that mean to you? 

I believe that the sublime can be found within what we typically perceive as the most ordinary. And the opposite is also true – that what we perceive as most sublime, is also quite ordinary – it is not some otherworldly thing but whatever is right under our noses. I make art of, from, about, with, in and for, every day life. 

Breathing Sleep (7,680 breaths / 8 hours)
2023, Ink on paper, 28 x 21 3/4”

 A current series in your artwork is based in time and beautifully depicts the passage of time through days or through breaths, can you tell us about where that springs from? 

In those first few weeks after my father died, when I made the first drawing that would be the beginning of the lifetime portrait series, making the work was not only about seeking solace and an outlet for the loss I felt, it was also driven by a desire to more deeply process and embody what it meant for someone to have lived 74 years, and what it meant to have shared 44 of those years with him. What does the shape of that life journey look like? What does the shape of that time look like? Our structures and experiences of time are often intangible and often also abstract – an hour is a human construct, a week is a construct, so is a month. However, a day as a unit of time is a physical, embodied experience – the earth makes a full rotation over the course of a single day, and as the sun rises, then sets, then rises again, our body feels and knows it. And so the unit of a day has become a tangible and fundamental building block of most of my drawings. As has the breath, and a heartbeat. 

I appreciate how time and breath is embedded in the making of your work as well, are you working on a couple at a time? 

No. I work on a single drawing at a time. Each piece takes several days to complete, and each one is a unique journey in and of itself, so I let each drawing unfold and run its full course, before starting another. 

How would you describe a studio session? 

Maybe it’s the nature of these particular drawings or just how sacred each studio session feels to me (since that time is such a precious resource), a session in the studio often feels like a ritual. I usually start by brewing a cup of my favorite tea (with oat milk and honey), I light some palo santo (one of my favorite scents ever), sometimes a candle too. I set my phone on do-not-disturb (can’t have a call or a message screw up my count), queue up a playlist, set up my supplies and slowly dive in. Since each drawing requires focus and a clear head that can count without losing track, I don’t listen to podcasts or talking or anything with strong vocals, I don’t talk on the phone, I don’t do anything other than being fully with and in the flow of the work. An ideal studio session will be AT LEAST two hours, ideally three or four. Anything less just feels like a tease. 

LEFT: Studio, Brooklyn, NY.

RIGHT: Constant Change, 2023, Ink on paper, 27 x 19”

You shared that your father kept meticulous details about his life in a calendar, is there a way that you are keeping a record?  Do you keep a journal or a sketchbook? 

Yes, I keep both. I love to write first thing in the morning – the kind of free-form “brain drain” writing that Julia Cameron advocated for in the “Artist’s Way.” And I keep detailed process notes in a sketchbook as I work on each drawing. I keep count of all of the marks, the time each drawing session takes, I test, sketch and annotate. My sketchbooks are the unfiltered behind-the-scenes view of how each drawing comes together. They’re like the messy loose threads on the back of a tapestry, which I often find as beautiful as the front.   

What books are on your nightstand right now? 

I love that you phrased this question as plural – because you know there is a pile of books on my nightstand, not just one. Currently in rotation / in the queue:

“How We Live Is How We Die” by Pema Chödrön

“World as Lover, World as Self” by Joanna Macy

“The Mystic Heart” by Wayne Teasdale

“Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman 

“Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees” by Lawrence Weschler

Sketchbook, 2023. 

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Find Agnieszka on instagram

15 | Artist profile: Terran Last Gun

Detail

Seeking Balance (2023) Ink and colored pencil on antique ledger notebook sheet (c. 1908) 

What part of the country did you grow up?

I grew up in Browning, Montana that is located in Piikani (Blackfeet) - Piikani is one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy. The original territory extended from Yellowstone River in Montana to the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta Canada.

how does that reverberate in the work?

This is a very rural place. It’s where the plains meet the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the West, and the North, East, and South are the plains. There is also the Sweet Pine Hills to the east which to me resemble islands out in the ocean, but in this case the plains. My work reflects the land and geographic landmarks  such as the three massive Sweet Pine Hills that sit out on the plains, as well as buttes and other singular elements in the landscape. The singular form are an influence - holding land, cosmos, celestial beings and place within the cultural histories

 Can you share more about your upbringing and background; how has it influenced the artist you are today?

My father is an artist, using ledger paper as well, but I wasn’t interested in making art until I got to Santa Fe, NM to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). However, Blackfoot painted lodges and our visual aesthetics have always influenced my work. I am working in a continuum manner. I have a book collection of historic and photographic books on my people. The symbolic imagery that was developed through lodge paintings have influenced my visual vocabulary.

 Blackfoot painted lodges can generally be looked at in 3 visual tiers.

Bottom: representing land and place

Middle: unique and personal to the lodge owners

Top: representing the cosmos, constellations, and our solar system

 I view our painted lodges as Classic great plains art that were painted with natural pigments for 10’s of 1,000’s of years. I am drawn to the history, layered personal stories, experiences, and recollections of home that can be seen in my work. The Blackfoot Confederacy were never displaced or relocated off of our traditional territory, but for Piikani in Montana we got pushed up against the Canadian border and Rocky Mountains.

Detail | Where Harmony Exists (2023) Ink and colored pencil on antique ledger notebook sheet (dated 1924) 

You currently live in Santa Fe, NM, How did you end up there? Are you currently teaching?

I enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) for museum studies in 2011, and fell in love with art making while I was there. Specifically, printmaking with an emphasis in Serigraphy, and photography. I was invited to teach this year in the printmaking department. It has been great to teach what I know -  Serigraphy 1 – and it has been a huge learning experience. 

 Through research I learned that your father, Terrance Guardipee Last Gun, makes ledger drawings. Can you talk about his work and/or influence?

 My father’s paintings and ledger drawings, depict cultural figures, warriors and Blackfoot narratives in his work. I noticed these geometric forms in his work and wondered where those were coming from. Then I found out it was from our painted lodges and that they all had various symbology. The Blackfoot geometric forms started to influence and emerge in my work.

In 2020, the pandemic closed the print studios that I was working in. My father gave me some ledger sheets some years before that I was just hanging on to and not ready to use, but once the studios closed I shifted into drawing on ledger sheets at that time. I transferred and adapted the visual vocabulary from printmaking to the ledger drawings. 

Your ledger drawings combine a historic page with what seems like a modernist or pop art references, is that a correct interpretation? What does the imagery evoke for you?

My work draws from Indigenous geometric abstraction, as well as pop art for the vibrant, bold, saturated colors (like Lichtenstein, Warhol, and Stella), minimalism, and hard edge paintings. I love op art for its color interaction and the visual vibration it creates.  I’m playing with the idea of abstraction – feelings, experiences, moods and color means many things across cultures, religions and places. And also, what you see is what you see. Titles evoke another layer of my ideas and what I was thinking about as well as inviting the viewers interpretations and associations.  Good or bad, the invokes so many different feelings about the work.

 How do you find ledgers to draw in, do people give them to you? Do you have a secret source?

I’ve gotten paper from my father, through trading, and through folks giving it to me. Government and county ledger sheets are the best, because they are linen ledger, they work well with the colored pencils. The paper is from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, so I am thinking about that time, what was happening in North America, what was happening to Piikani people. 

Enlightening Sites (2023) Ink and colored pencil on antique ledger notebook sheet (dated 1921) 

 Do you surround yourself with reference materials or colors? What does your studio look like?

I have a home studio, it ties back to The Piikani culture of resourcefulness – of using what we have. It is a small sacred artist space. I have a collection of rocks, driftwood, beaver wood, and toys. I like taking breaks to look at and handle them. They are my little treasures.  I have a collection of books, exhibition catalogs, and postcards of archival photographs by Edward Curtis, Roland Reed, Winold Reiss, Walter McClintock, Carl Bodmer, and George Catlin.

 I also have post it notes up of words, phrases and terms such as:

Visual sovereignty

Survivance

Intergenerational

The power of the world works in circles

I think about the cosmos and how the Blackfoot creation story includes the Sun and moon and morning star. We are star people in that sense – part of the solar system. The expansive origin stories include our own people, as well as the whole of humanity.

 Do you listen to music there? What genre do you return to?

I listen to music and podcasts in the studio

Music - Black marble, still corners, synth wave, dark synth, electronic instrumental and because I grew up in Montana I love country music.

Podcasts - Broken Boxes,  5 plain questions, Hello Print Friend. I was recently interviewed on a local Santa Fe radio show called Coffee and culture

I love films too – Horror, sci fi and comedy. There is so much humor innate to Native people and to my family, and sometimes it’s rough humor. My sisters and I have a group chat, and stay connected through gifs, memes and jokes.

 What books are on your nightstand right now? What books do you consistently return to for perspective?

I collect books on history and art:

Lanterns on the Plains: The Blackfeet Photographs of Walter McClintock (2009)

Painted Tipis: By Contemporary Plains Indian Artists (1973)

Nitsitapiisinni: The Story of the Blackfoot People (2001)

William Seitz - The responsive eye

Frank stella Retrospective

Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight

Frederick Hammersley to Paint Without Thinking

Detail | Enjoying The Open Space (2023) Ink and colored pencil on antique ledger notebook sheet (dated 1924) 

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Do you keep a journal or a sketchbook?

I document each drawing's color palette in a black Rhodia gridded book for color documentation that I started in 2020. At first I was doing it on printmaking paper, but after seeing an exhibition of Frederick Hammersley, I started documenting it in a book.

 Do you have a favorite brand of pencils?

I use 3 brands of pencils and they each have different qualities and uses

Faber Castell

Pablo

Holbein 

Pencil drawing takes time because I am pressing hard for a saturated bold look. Working with geometric shapes gives me a sense of order - of feeling organized. Drawing on antique paper with someone else’s handwriting creates an interesting play between the two. It doesn’t necessarily drive the composition, but is an element in the final work.

 My background was in photography and printmaking. Switching to colored pencils expanded my color sensitivity and knowledge of the color spectrum. When I am out walking around seeing color, I am naming the color of the pencil, like “”strawberry”, “ tiger lily” or “phthalo blue.” I use a 12 and an 18 color wheel to select and determine color and harmony. Triads, tetrads, complementary, split complementary, and monochromatic. I am also exploring tints, tones and shades of pure colors that amplify the full color.

 Is there anything you would like to add?

Originally or historically, drawings were made on bison hides, elk hides and lodges depicting success and coup stories. In the 1850’s and 60’s, incarcerated warriors were given ledger and accounting sheets to draw on and document and record their lives. In the present time, we are still using the same documents – they are antiques now. When using the ledger sheets, especially the Montana sheets, I feel I am reinserting, reclaiming, reinvigorating our own culture and stories, after generations of being forced to do so many things.

In the Museum of the Plains there is a collection of Historic Native items and ledger drawings of the Plains tribes. I was able to handle a ledger book that was full of drawings  -  war scenes, encounters, courtships, ceremonial scenes, and more.

 My father Terrance Guardipee Last Gun makes drawings using warrior figures and scenes. He and his generation sold work at art markets all over the country, including the Santa Fe Indian Market. My generation of artists sell at markets too (I will be in Santa Fe Indian Market for the third time this year) - but we are also interested in working with galleries and museums, going to residencies, getting support, transcending the boundaries of where our art is shown. I honor the tradition of ledger drawings in my work – but it brings questions about abstraction and symbology. I am in the continuum of what it means to make ledger drawings.

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Join us and Terran on Saturday December 2, from 7-10