Page 128 - Flaunt 170 - The Phoenix Issue - Kiernan Shipka

so it’s best to develop a self-sustaining rhythm. Rigorously define your practice and never forget that work must always come first. Which work from your historical output do you feel solicited the most sadness? How about the greatest calm? It is not my role to assign either calm or sadness to my work, but instead the role of whoever must live with the work. What is your favorite time of day to work, and why? I get up to take care of my pets and read in the stillness of the early morning. West Coast Conceptual art has long gone hand-in-hand with activism and message-making; take the environ- mentalism from Joe Hawley, Mel Hen- derson and Alfred Young, or the Lati- no art collective Asco, which targeted racism through its performances. As you prepare for your show at the Pacific Design Center, how would you hope viewers to absorb your approach to conceptualism? It’s always difficult to speak to an experience that is not your own. But there’s an inherent reluctance in my work, as it is temporal and thus evolves. Eventually, many of my works need to be repainted or replaced by bigger or smaller canvases. After work leaves my care, it is no longer my business what happens to it. I don’t see myself as a political artist, necessarily. However, the painting is always dictated by external circumstances and is never truly com- pleted. I see this as a profound act. Is this the first time you have made a magazine the “charge-taker?” Do you have any stories about other unortho- dox charge-takers? Indeed, it is the first time! I wish I had more experimental charge-takers! There are so many possibilities and av- enues of exploration, and people rarely realize this. I would love for someone to contradict my work because, in that way, it would create a new dimension to the work. 122