Author: vianokemag

Studio Visit: BanG!

Written by Tif Robinette

Affordable studio spaces for artists seem to be in short supply and high demand in Roanoke. But moving your studio out of your spare bedroom and bringing your work to a more public, professional, and accessible space can be a huge career step for artists. Betsy Hale Bannan and Gerry Bannan, a dynamic artist couple working and teaching in the Roanoke region, are making that plunge this summer. Working out of a cool space downtown, while still keeping costs low, were priorities for these two painters. In a true Do-It-Yourself spirit, they found a frightfully dirty space on 4th Street, previously a concrete business, and are transforming it into two slick studios and an adventurous mini-gallery. Still in the process of the transition into this new space, cleverly christened “BanG!”, I caught up with the busy artists.

TIF: Betsy, could you tell me a little about your work?

BETSY: I think what people most know me by are my paintings, the female figures of the stewardesses, the Madonna-type figures. They are large, symbolic, and iconic, but lately I’ve been doing drawings on paper that are organic, with seed pods. I also am making these tiny paintings that are poured oil paint. They are really just all about the paint. They have come out looking like galaxies, nebulas, and explosions. I like that they are quick and intuitive. I like doing something different. The large paintings are laden down with all the symbolism. They are hard. They are really hard paintings to do, like a puzzle. How does an airplane fit visually with a 1940’s movies star? I like working on different things and they aren’t all the same bodies of work.

TIF: Gerry, what are you working on right now?

GERRY: I have been doing ink drawings on mylar. I’ve always liked the way ink slides across mylar. In doing these drawings, I’ve pulled the drawing out of my paintings. I’ve felt an obligation to have paintings be tamed by drawing. A painting had to behave itself. I think the more I do the drawings, the more they separate. The paintings are very carefully planned. I have found a way to make my drawings be intuitive and then let my paintings be more intuitive, but [the new paintings] will be different from anything I’ve ever done.

TIF: What is your current subject matter?

GERRY: The drawings are really specific in subject matter, an assembly of objects that could be together, some drawn from life and some from my imagination. I let the objects start to tell me a story. I’m drawing a shell. What’s next to the shell? Oh, a pair of scissors. They get to be the remnants of a fairytale, or a narrative. The plant forms in them are a connection to the paintings.

“Passage,” Gerry Bannan. Ink on mylar, 12” x 24”, 2012.

TIF: As oil painters working on a fairly large scale in cramped quarters in your home, how do you think moving to this larger space will affect your materials, scale, or practice?

GERRY: Larger space will allow for having more work stations, having a drawing portion and a painting portion of my studio. I feel the two parts of my work [drawing and painting] getting pulled apart further. I like the ability to be able to work in two different ways, and walk across the room and draw, not having them truncated.

TIF: What about scale?

GERRY: I’d like to see if things get bigger. But I’m a pragmatist and will work in panels, modularly, like the 14th century altar pieces.

“Our Girl in Tinian,” Betsy Hale Bannan. Oil on linen, 72” x 56”.

“Come Fly With Me,” Betsy Hale Bannan. Oil on linen, 72” x 56”.

TIF: Could you talk about the process about finding this particular space?

BETSY: It’s funny how it seemed to take a long time, but also all of a sudden. We had to physically be in the house for our studios when we had a child, but now he is grown and moving off to college.

GERRY: Financial constraints too, we always found places to live where we could have extra room for us to work in the home. Our apartment in Brooklyn was very big for New York standards, and we always worked out of the house.

BETSY: I liked working at home after my full time job and kid, but now I feel like I could leave the house at 7:30 in the evening to go to the studio to work.

GERRY: It has taken a few years to find something, but it has to happen by word of mouth. A lot of leads don’t work out; spaces that could have possibilities, but when the right one comes up you have to snatch it.

BETSY: We just drove around and got numbers off of available buildings. Ideally we wanted something a little bigger, but now that we are in here, this is all we could manage. If the ceilings were higher or if the space were bigger it would have been so much more daunting.

GERRY: This whole notion of not working outside the house wasn’t only because of having a child. You go to work, come home from work, do stuff at home, and we feared we would be wasting our money on a space we wouldn’t use.

BETSY: I feared it would be unrealistic. But now it’s totally doable.

“Homunculus,” Gerry Bannan. Oil, encaustic, and gold leaf, 48” x 36”, 2009.

TIF: Do you think moving your studio outside your home will bump up sales or increase visibility?

GERRY: One thing that sparked all this was one of the problems of working in the home. This town has never had a successful commercial gallery that wasn’t a co-op. The art idea is that you work at home and then other people show and sell your work for you, but that doesn’t happen here. If someone wants to see my work, I don’t want to show out of my house. I want to show my work in a neutral environment.

BETSY: It’s more objective and professional: the clean, blank space. It has made us more accessible, people are already stopping by.

GERRY: We both work out of town, all day, and we have never had those experiences of just bumping into people or…

BETSY: Never happenstance or organic meetings.

GERRY: The chance encounter spawns ideas, “Let’s do this thing, then that thing turns into something else.”

TIF: So this space will be that bridge for you. Tell me about your vision for the mini-gallery.

GERRY: We want the gallery/exhibition space to invite people to be experimental in a small space. You may not have enough to fill Olin Hall. But you have a little body of work, maybe drawings. I think it can be more dynamic, changing all the time.

BETSY: Less formal, more spontaneous. And of course if no one is in there, we can hang our stuff in between. And having openings! The idea of an art party is intriguing, taking the stuffiness out, I like the idea of hanging out with art. That’s how artists live, and I don’t think people are comfortable doing that. Or used to it.

GERRY: People know how to go out and enjoy music, but how can that experience be analogous to art? Everyone is afraid to say things about the work at openings.

BETSY: You eat your cheese and stay 45 minutes, then leave. The objective is that this is accessible.

To view more work or contact the artists, check out their websites: gerrybannan.com & betsyhalebannan.com

This article was originally published in the second issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in July 2012.

July 1, 2012
Toobz: Distorting Barriers

A look inside the evolution and distortion of Roanoke artist Toobz.

Upon returning to the Roanoke area after leaving a skateboarding career behind in California, Toobz Muir was eager to find his niche without succumbing to a traditional nine-to-five lifestyle. Influenced by breakdancing and hip hop culture from the West Coast, he easily gravitated towards graffiti and other forms of visual art. As his talents evolved Toobz discovered the fine artist within himself and began honing in on the psychological aspects of his work. We were excited to meet with Toobz and hear his story, learn about his process, and find out what influences his pieces.

“Modern Living,” Toobz Muir, Oil, 2011

VIA: Tell us how you got started in the arts? What led you to where you are today?

TOOBZ: I started skateboarding in 1988 and thought it was something I was going to do forever. My family wasn’t too supportive, so I ended up doing a lot of it myself. I decided it wasn’t exactly what I thought it was after I was sponsored and moved out to California. There was no future to it; I was trying to get a grip on where it was going. I didn’t think that art was something I was going to do. About 6-7 years ago was when I started doing it seriously. I understood the process by trial and error, just by watching and deciphering other people’s’ work.

Juggling a family and this lifestyle I’m trying to achieve has been really hard. But all of a sudden I got laid off a few months ago, which has been the best thing. All of a sudden I had a guy contact me who just told me, “I’m going to manage you.” So now I’m working on the Beastie Boys album, I’m working on a Chung King album. Just this year I’ve had around 12 interviews. I’ve even had people from Germany interview me. How do people know me and I don’t know them?

VIA: What is it like working with graffiti as your primary style of painting?

TOOBZ: The street art thing is really huge right now, more so than graffiti, but graffiti has been around since the beginning of man. People have been writing on cave walls for thousands of years but it’s just now getting accepted, which is weird. All of a sudden it’s “really cool,” but that’s a good thing for me. Let’s bring the art out of the galleries and out onto the streets where the people are. It’s not like we want to deface and vandalize. A wall to me is more of a disruption to what we see; it’s such a barrier. How many times do you sit and look at a mural and say, “Gosh, I can’t wait to get around this.” You want to just sit there, stare at it, and absorb it. So instead, when a wall is blank, all you have on your mind is to get around it, to go around the corner. [People] look at vandalism as you writing on something. Well, what about the vandalism of tearing up nature and putting a building there? I mean, what is more detrimental to nature than tearing it up and putting something man-made there? A square building that puts pollution into the air to make profit, that’s vandalism to me. Throwing oil into the ocean, that’s vandalism. Who goes to jail for that? But if you tag something you’ll go to jail. It’s crazy. I don’t get that part.

“Let’s bring the art out of the galleries and out onto the streets where the people are.”

For right now, art is finding a new wave and evolution, especially with the whole street art thing because people are collaborating more. What’s sad is that it started here [the East Coast], New York, the whole hip hop culture, and then it went out to the West Coast. But now it’s coming back and it’s sort of like we’re late bloomers on it. How can it start and then just diminish? But things change and maybe it had to leave to start fresh and get new influence from them.

“Living Somewhere,” Toobz Muir, Oil, 2011

VIA: Tell us more about your process. What inspires your work?

TOOBZ: My father had a calcium deficiency when he was born; he had a lack of calcium in his face. They took several of his ribs out and they reconstructed his face. So I’ve grown up looking at distortion my whole life and it’s something I incorporate into my paintings constantly. I guess it’s something I feel comfortable with and has to do with him being my father, with feeling safe. Slanting, obscuring, and distorting images are one of my favorite things to do. I love to stretch and pull and I do this without Photoshop; I just look at a face and I can pull it down and stretch it in my mind.

I take what we see as “perfect people” and do that to them because it is still beautiful in a sense, to me; a “beautiful decay” type of thing. I just find beauty in the grotesque sometimes, or what people see as grotesque, but I don’t see it that way. I have a somewhat photographic memory. I’ll look at something and study it and imagine how I could distort it. Then I’ll take this ear that I’ve been studying and incorporate it into something else and it just works. I don’t know why. I guess because we’re all pretty much connected. And I just realized that I do this, in relation to my father, about four months ago. Everything I do is very psychological because I don’t know any other way to do it. I just find that I can convey my messages like that. I’m a perfectionist, but I’m a sloppy perfectionist. I think that’s one reason I do the distortions because there’s no one true way of doing it; as long as everything looks clean it doesn’t have to be in proportion.

VIA: How has your work evolved since you first started painting?

TOOBZ: I’m just a graffiti artist who has turned into more of a fine artist with a spray can, and I find that it is more appealing to the route that I’m trying to go. I used to do letters and silly characters but when I started getting more into realism I really enjoyed doing that kind of work, especially with the distortion and seeing that come alive. I like to let my work evolve when I’m creating it. I’m doing some pieces right now with charcoal and I’ve invented certain tools, like makeshift brushes, that give a certain effect. Happy accidents happen and the work starts to just grow out of that wrinkle and I decide it’s just going to be more organic. Even if I have a reference my work grows into something. I mean, think about life, what’s exact about that? I don’t find things exciting that already exist. I don’t like it when people do portraits of a photograph that look just like the photograph. That’s very skilled, yes, but where is that one percent of you?

VIA: Do you always work with spray paint or do you incorporate other mediums into your work?

TOOBZ: There are certain mediums that take the physical effort of doing things instead of taking a picture of something, blowing it up big and pasting it on a wall. That is a form of communication, which is just fine, but say somebody grows up learning all of these different instruments, becomes a really good musician and then someone just sits down in front of a computer, with a machine, composes a bunch of music, and makes millions out of it. You know, there’s a difference to that. It’s the blood, sweat, and tears versus the overnight success.

I have been experimenting with different mediums. Right now I’m working with charcoal. I used to not like getting messy but now I don’t mind my fingers getting involved and making it organic. Being a part of the paper, feeling and touching it, the face feels much more real and I feel like I’m even more of a part of it with my oils and my fingers as a part of it. It’s really cool.

There are different types of paints that I use. There are a ton of different graffiti companies right now making different spray paints. I buy it from Barcelona, Italy, Germany, and Canada. They all make top-quality paints for graffiti artists. People think, “oh, just go to Wal-Mart, buy some [spray paint],” but it’s like every other artist; they like their Winsor and Newton or Grumbacher types of paints, and now graffiti has its own line of paints with an array of colors. It’s incredible, you just get to go nuts over it.

VIA: How do you choose your color palette?

TOOBZ: I’m colorblind; I have a problem with secondary and tertiary colors. Primary colors I can see, like a true blue or yellow, but if it’s mauve, grey, tan, or lime… in-between colors like that are hard to see. So I’ll pull a picture into Photoshop, put it in black and white, and then look at the shades because it’s so much easier for me to identify with the shades when I can see the contrasts. I can’t see hard contrasts unless it’s in black and white. So then I just use colors that are the same tone as the dark parts of the face and I use the same colors of the same tone as the lightest part. I’m using multiple colors but I don’t even know what they are; as long as I see that they’re close to that scale that’s how I come up with my variations of colors.

VIA: Do you usually have any specific goals in mind when you start a new piece?

TOOBZ: My main goal is just to paint. There are so many different people with different tastes in all walks of life. Why narrow it down and make them think one way? It’s so much more about me and the subject matter that I’ve chose. I have much more of a connection with the subject matter; it really is exciting. It’s like meeting a new person, especially when you create it. And you really get to know this person, because you created them, and for that one little moment you’re almost like God, because you created this for people to see. There is that one percent of me that is put into the process, the heart, and the image itself. The color choice, perspective, and the balance of everything… that is me.

Find Toobz Online

Visit his website or follow him on Instagram.

“She Had Me at First Sight,” Toobs Muir, Spray paint, 2011

“I Sock It,” Toobz Muir, Spray Paint, 2010

“Ann Won,” Toobz Muir, Spray paint, 2011

Toobz works on a charcoal drawing in his studio.

This article was originally published in the first issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in May 2012.

June 1, 2012
PechaKucha: Telling Your Story in the 20×20 Format

After David Verde attended his first PechaKucha Night in Charleston, South Carolina last October, he knew he needed to bring the event to Southwest Virginia. “I have several friends down there who are very invalided with the event,” he explained. “It’s like a rock concert for $5. I had to bring one home to our area.”

Seven years ago architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Tokyo, Japan created the first ever PechaKucha Night, a networking event where creatives can come together to talk about their projects and endeavors. PechaKucha, a Japanese term for “chit chat,” serves as a great description of the presentation format, in which you show 20 slides, each for 20 seconds. The official PechaKucha website states, “It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace. PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps – just about anything really.” Many people have compared PechaKucha Night to TED Talks, but Klein and Dytham disagree. “TED is top down, PechaKucha is bottom up!

David quickly contacted the global PechaKucha office in Tokyo to request to use the event trademark in Southwest Virginia. Two weeks later he was approved and the planning began to create a regional PechaKucha for the Roanoke and New River Valley region. “For such a small area, there are many groups of people trying to do good things, but it seems they have gotten into a rut of unintentionally exclusivity, making it hard for others to get involved,” he says. “I also think there is far more happening in our area outside of downtown Roanoke and Virginia Tech and people need to become aware of it somehow. Southwest Virginia and especially the Roanoke and New River Valley need to come more openly connected. We’re too close to one another to think our communities don’t effect one another.”

“Roanoke and New River Valley need to come more openly connected. We’re too close to one another to think our communities don’t effect one another.”

The event is now happening in over 500 cities worldwide, and PechaKucha Night Southwest Virginia is growing right along with it. The first local event, which took place this past February, was organized and put on almost completely by David. “My wife helped out on the day of the event. If it weren’t for some of my personal friends and the presenters who came out to speak for the first night, it wouldn’t have been able to happen. It was a group effort, which is the whole idea behind PechaKucha, I think.” Thankfully, David no longer has to run the show alone. “I now have a growing team of incredibly motivated and talented individuals who believe in PechaKucha’s mission.”

A variety of topics were presented at the first and second PechaKucha Nights, both of which took place in downtown Roanoke. Presenters ranged from Erica Mason of Hired Guns discussing “20 Steps to Creative Success” to 13-year-old Jacob Wynn excitedly explaining the rules and terrain of Christiansburg’s Wolf’s Ridge Paintball. In fact, the diversity in subject matter is what makes each PKN so great. “Good PechaKucha presentations are the ones that uncover the unexpected, unexpected talent, unexpected ideas,” the website reads. “Some PechaKuchas tell great stories about a project or a trip. Some are incredibly personal, some are incredibly funny, but all are very different making each PechaKucha Night like ‘a box of chocolates’.”

David’s mission for the Southwest Virginia chapter of PK is clear: “I want PechaKucha to become the first thing people think of when it comes to where to find out what incredible things people are doing and things happening in our area. PechaKucha belongs to each town and city in SWVA, each presenter past present or future, every sponsor, every person who attends, and people who don’t know about it yet. If people take ownership for PechaKucha, in turn I hope they will take ownership of the community they live in and its neighboring communities. Ownership is how communities grow and flourish.”

Jeanie Patterson (Owner of the Daily Grind), photo by John Park

Lousie Wade (Miss Virginia Senior 2011), photo by John Park

Chelsea Brandt and Emily Sibitzky, photo by Patty Quilter

This article was originally published in the first issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in May 2012.

June 1, 2012
College Student Spotlight: Eddie Resnick
- Age: 19 years old
- School: Virginia Western Community College
- Major: Communication Design
It takes little more than a glance to appreciate the detail that goes into Eddie Resnick’s illustrations. “That one took 52 hours,” he says, pointing out a detailed sketch of a lion as I flip through his portfolio. “The ball point pen takes me twice as long.” He starts each piece with a sketch which he then goes over with a Micron, finishing some of them with colorful Faber- Castell India ink. “I work on them when I get bored at work, if no one is there.”

Eddie’s interest in illustration started when he was in elementary school and he has been doing it ever since. “A friend and I were in a contest to draw the owl for the front page of the yearbook for our grade. He told them that I cheated, so I didn’t get chosen. So I was like, ‘I’m going to beat this kid. I’m going to get better than this kid if it takes me my entire life.’ I think that’s what started that.”

And his competitiveness didn’t stop there. Two years into his college education, Eddie is waiting to hear if he has been accepted into VCU’s highly-competitive illustration program. “[It] would be a great opportunity. They’re fourth in the nation right now.” He is hoping to make the move to Richmond with a friend and to possibly start a t-shirt design company in the future.

While many of his pieces are of animals, the trend is not intentional. “I do like animals, but it’s just whatever I feel like drawing. Anything that I feel I can portray on paper, I try to do. A lot of it is imagination based. It should be what you can think of, and what your capabilities are.”

This article was originally published in the first issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in May 2012.
June 1, 2012
College Student Spotlight: Jordan Poole
- School: Virginia Western Community College
- Major: Communication Design
Jordan Poole has been an artist as long as he can remember. His work ranges from still life studies and portraiture to conceptual pieces inspired by social issues. His choices of medium are just as varied. “I have no single medium that I prefer to work with. I believe it is important to understand art as multifaceted and through a variety of study and mediums I can enhance that understanding.”

“I am inspired by nearly every movement in art and each new view. I have recently become inspired by Joyce Faulknor, and Jesi Pace Berkley, and I will always find inspiration in the works of Jackson Pollock and my father David Poole. My inspiration is ever differing. I will see something that will spark a train of thought and usually my art will be its conclusion, and each is significantly different, but occasionally I will continue to produce from a single thought.”

“Star Man,” Jordan Poole, watercolor and guache

“Jimi,” Jordan Poole, watercolor

Jordan also finds inspiration in music. “I think that art and music share similar aesthetic qualities in beauty and in the way they deliver messages. I believe I am motivated by music and art similarly.”

“I think that art and music share similar aesthetic qualities in beauty and in the way they deliver messages.”

After his time at Western, Jordan plans to attend the Douglas Education Center for Tom Savini’s Special Makeup Effects program. His dream is to work as a prosthetic makeup artist for the film industry creating special makeup effects. Additionally, he says he plans to continue his fine art exploration. “I am always willing to sell any of my artwork to someone who appreciates it, along with accepting commissions for beautiful new endeavors.”

“Orange Still Life,” Jordan Poole, oil on canvas

“Green Pitcher,” Jordan Poole, oil on canvas

This article was originally published in the first issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in May 2012.
June 1, 2012
Samantha Macher’s “To the New Girl from the Former Mrs. _”

Samantha Macher’s play To the New Girl from the Former Mrs. ___: Sound Advice to My Husband’s New Wife or Mistress is coming to Studio Roanoke this month. We contacted Samantha to get to know her a bit and to find out what inspires her work as a playwright.

VIA: Summarize To the New Girl for someone who knows nothing about it yet.

“To the New Girl” is a ten-woman monologue show in which women in relationships give advice on the proper care and feeding of their former spouse to their mistresses.

VIA: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you attend

Summarize To the New Girl for someone who knows nothing about it yet.

“To the New Girl” is a ten-woman monologue show in which women in relationships give advice on the proper care and feeding of their former spouse to their mistresses.

VIA: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you attend college and what did you study there?

I am originally from Long Island, New York, but moved to Northern Virginia when I was young. I went to the University of Virginia for undergrad, where I got my degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy. Then I went to Hollins University to attend their MFA Playwriting program.

VIA: How did you get into professional play writing?

I have always been a writer of sorts. As a kid I would write short stories and turn them into books, and as I got older I would write poems and songs, and eventually, I started writing plays because I really enjoyed writing dialogue. I got into professional playwriting because I always felt like I had a story to tell, and in my opinion, there’s no better way to really reach the audience for it then through live theater. There’s nothing like it in the world! I’m so glad I got the opportunity to be a part of the Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University to hone my craft, and give me the contacts I needed to go be a playwright in the real world.

VIA: How many plays have you written and how many of them have been performed on stage?

I have written seven full-length plays and probably between fifteen and twenty completed ten-minute to one-act plays. I have had the great honor of having four of my full-length plays performed in theaters across the country, namely SkyPilot Theatre in Los Angeles, Hell-Tro Theatre collective in Brooklyn, and at Mill Mountain Theater in Roanoke and Playwrights Horizons 440 Studios in Manhattan in collaboration with the New Works Initiative through the Playwrights Lab at Hollins University. I have also had a few of my ten-minute plays performed in Los Angeles and Manhattan as well.

VIA: How many times has To the New Girl been performed, and how did Studio Roanoke get their hands on it?

This play has had one LA production and a workshop production in New York. I think the play was chosen for Studio Roanoke in part because they have always championed new works from new artists, but also because it was originally written to be performed in the same season as Jeff Goode’s The Emancipation of Alabaster McGill which had it’s east coast debut this February at Studio Roanoke. Back in 2010 at SkyPilot Theatre in Los Angeles, where both Jeff and I are Playwrights-in- Residence, “Alabaster” had already been chosen for an already male-heavy season of shows. Jeff Goode and Bob Rusch, our Artistic Director, approached the women playwrights in the company and asked us to each write a play that could solve the gender parity problem that faced the 2011 season. I was already inspired to write the show, so I quickly finished the script and turned it in. It was chosen soon thereafter and served to create a more balanced, equal season that featured the talents of our actors of both genders.

VIA: What is the main source of inspiration for your plays?

Cliché though it is, “The Triumph of the Human Spirit” is probably my biggest inspiration. It covers everything from Love to War (two topics I write about often), and also allows me to create well-rounded, interesting characters for actors to play. I also tend to write a lot about women, in part because of personal experience, but also because I love to see strong female characters represented in the arts, especially in theater.

VIA: Was there a single event or idea that inspired To the New Girl?

I plead the fifth.

VIA: Is To the New Girl family friendly?

I would not suggest bringing the little ones along. I have written plays for younger audiences, this ain’t one of them!

Poster design by Susana Hernandez.

This article was originally published in the first issue of VIA Noke Magazine, printed in Roanoke, Virginia in May 2012.

June 1, 2012