Originally published in Issue 5: Excess, Cantanker Magazine
Dog Show: Behind the Costumed Canines of Stephanie Wagner
With its every piece an intricately frosted confection, Divinity Series, Stephanie Wagner’s collection of elaborately dressed and decorated canines is not as innocent as its cascading superfluities would have you believe. A lavender poodle is entombed in lace, a featureless, peach Lhasa-Apso is hidden by pulled-taffy hair, a pale red schnauzer has bulging eyes and a clown-like grimace. “Did the candy colors fool you?” they ask.
Wagner’s dogs are humorous yet disconcerting in their unrestrained extravagance. The head of an elated Pekingese protrudes from a knitted puddle, a button rose moonlights as the bulging eye of a Dreamsicle-orange Chihuahua. The animals are absorbed by their decoration until they become it, a confusion of subject and object that is, at once, gratifying and eerily false.
Wagner’s experimental slip-casting technique enables her to create the dense yet delicate forms. Hair, lace, silk flowers, grass, and knitted accessories are dipped into clay slurry; when the original material burns out in the firing process, a ceramic “fossil” is left. These adornments build atop one another, some spiraling into highly crafted towers.
After installing a large group of 25 or so dogs at the Austin Museum of Art’s 20 to Watch in February, Wagner’s studio still had the air of the triumph and relief that comes with the completion of a huge project. We talked crafting, success and the Californian invasion of Austin.
How does your work relate to the theme of Excess?
I think if you were going to describe my work, “excess” would be one of the first three words. Instead of obsessive compulsive disorder I have obsessive-excessive disorder.
My mother was a crafter. We were always making stuff on the dining room table. It was just covered with crafting supplies so we could never eat there. My mother would keep all of the debris, the trash, from the projects; we’d organize it all and keep pulling out these materials—pom-poms, lace, trim, things from Hobby Lobby and Michaels. So I literally grew up with the materials I’m using now. I had and I still do have a love-hate relationship with wanting to have this clean environment, this order, but not being able to get away from the…stuff.
Someone accused me once of mocking Middle America, crafters, the bourgeoisie—but I’m not mocking it. I AM the bourgeoisie. (Laughs.) That’s where I’m from. These things are made with love. I am making fun but I’m making fun of myself as much as anyone else.
How did your current body of work develop?
In my earlier work, I was using the same craft-oriented materials that I use now in 3-dimensional sculptures with wire structures and paper-mache, pasting and gluing. But I could never get the kind of harmony that I wanted using the materials as they are. Then, Janet Kastner, one of the ceramics professors at UT, told me about casting slip which became my magic potion. I dip all the materials in slip, then when I attach them to the form and fire it, it all gets reduced to one common denominator. The materials are transformed instead of just being glued on.
I know you started out as a printmaker. Do you still make prints? How do they relate to your three-dimensional work?
I still do make prints. I’ve used a certain material to dress a ceramic dog, then I’ve inked the same material and run it through the press. Since I just finished making all these dogs, I’m ready to make more prints now. The prints are almost like sketches or ideas, but they’re after the fact, they’re almost like documentation. They are more ambiguous, more atmospheric. Usually, the 2-D work comes after the 3-D work. I think for a lot of people it’s the other way around. I never really make sketches of the dogs. I’ll have an idea and start researching a breed, like the Yorkshire terrier. I’ll look at a lot of pictures online or I’ll look at dog books. Then I build forms of the dogs intuitively.
How did you start using the animal theme?
It’s funny because everyone always asks if I have a dog and I don’t. I loved the film Marie Antoinette. When I started researching the Rococo period I found that that’s when they really started breeding those dogs specifically for show. A lot of the dogs that are bred today are almost bred in our image; they sometimes refer to it as “eugenics”. Now we’re dressing them, and it’s just becoming crazy.
I also thought dogs were a good platform. The idea seemed funny to me. I wanted there to be some way to enter the piece, something recognizable. Before I was making these sculptures that didn’t have clearly defined imagery, and I wanted something really specific because I’d never worked like that before.
They are definitely engaging. Maybe that’s because they have a face.
Some of them do. Some of them have assholes instead!
Do you work on several pieces simultaneously?
I do. I work out a process where I usually have three or four going at a time because the slip has to set up. Otherwise there’s a lot of waiting. When I was working on the museum show I had about nine pieces going. That caused me to lose a piece because I just pushed it too hard, but I wanted to get as many finished as possible. I wanted it to look like a store, as if you were going to register for your wedding and pick out awful crystal glasses or something like that. I think the installation is kind of alluring and repulsive at the same time.
Do you think it is difficult to be a successful artist in Austin? Do you feel successful?
I don’t know if you ever feel successful. I do feel successful, but I think it is very hard. Houston and Dallas are so close. Houston is the fourth or fifth largest art market, and I think you really have to tap into one of those. I hate talking about money but you really can’t sell work in Austin for as much as you could in Houston or Dallas or Los Angeles or New York. But I think it is changing and it is getting better. Things are getting a lot more interesting here. Austin’s growing. I moved here from California, it seems like now I’m talking to people all the time that have moved here from California, and now I’m hearing “Those damn Californians!”.
I think a lot of people are moving to Austin because of the lifestyle. I love living here, and I want to stay here, but so does everyone else. I heard some statistic that said there were more people with PhDs working in coffee houses here than any other city. People come here and get their graduate degrees and they don’t want to leave.
Do you feel like being in 20 to Watch is really going to give your career a big boost?
I sure as hell hope so! If this doesn’t do it?! (Laughs). I think there’s a lot of initial energy that comes from the show, and I’ve just acknowledged “I have to work this!” I put my website up right before the show, and I’ve been getting a really good response. The exhibit will be traveling for over a year, so I’m really interested to see what happens.
20 to Watch is open at the Austin Museum of Art until May 11, 2008.
http://www.amoainteractive.org/newartinaustin2008/
www.stephaniewagner.com
Dog Show: Behind the Costumed Canines of Stephanie Wagner
With its every piece an intricately frosted confection, Divinity Series, Stephanie Wagner’s collection of elaborately dressed and decorated canines is not as innocent as its cascading superfluities would have you believe. A lavender poodle is entombed in lace, a featureless, peach Lhasa-Apso is hidden by pulled-taffy hair, a pale red schnauzer has bulging eyes and a clown-like grimace. “Did the candy colors fool you?” they ask.
Wagner’s dogs are humorous yet disconcerting in their unrestrained extravagance. The head of an elated Pekingese protrudes from a knitted puddle, a button rose moonlights as the bulging eye of a Dreamsicle-orange Chihuahua. The animals are absorbed by their decoration until they become it, a confusion of subject and object that is, at once, gratifying and eerily false.
Wagner’s experimental slip-casting technique enables her to create the dense yet delicate forms. Hair, lace, silk flowers, grass, and knitted accessories are dipped into clay slurry; when the original material burns out in the firing process, a ceramic “fossil” is left. These adornments build atop one another, some spiraling into highly crafted towers.
After installing a large group of 25 or so dogs at the Austin Museum of Art’s 20 to Watch in February, Wagner’s studio still had the air of the triumph and relief that comes with the completion of a huge project. We talked crafting, success and the Californian invasion of Austin.
How does your work relate to the theme of Excess?
I think if you were going to describe my work, “excess” would be one of the first three words. Instead of obsessive compulsive disorder I have obsessive-excessive disorder.
My mother was a crafter. We were always making stuff on the dining room table. It was just covered with crafting supplies so we could never eat there. My mother would keep all of the debris, the trash, from the projects; we’d organize it all and keep pulling out these materials—pom-poms, lace, trim, things from Hobby Lobby and Michaels. So I literally grew up with the materials I’m using now. I had and I still do have a love-hate relationship with wanting to have this clean environment, this order, but not being able to get away from the…stuff.
Someone accused me once of mocking Middle America, crafters, the bourgeoisie—but I’m not mocking it. I AM the bourgeoisie. (Laughs.) That’s where I’m from. These things are made with love. I am making fun but I’m making fun of myself as much as anyone else.
How did your current body of work develop?
In my earlier work, I was using the same craft-oriented materials that I use now in 3-dimensional sculptures with wire structures and paper-mache, pasting and gluing. But I could never get the kind of harmony that I wanted using the materials as they are. Then, Janet Kastner, one of the ceramics professors at UT, told me about casting slip which became my magic potion. I dip all the materials in slip, then when I attach them to the form and fire it, it all gets reduced to one common denominator. The materials are transformed instead of just being glued on.
I know you started out as a printmaker. Do you still make prints? How do they relate to your three-dimensional work?
I still do make prints. I’ve used a certain material to dress a ceramic dog, then I’ve inked the same material and run it through the press. Since I just finished making all these dogs, I’m ready to make more prints now. The prints are almost like sketches or ideas, but they’re after the fact, they’re almost like documentation. They are more ambiguous, more atmospheric. Usually, the 2-D work comes after the 3-D work. I think for a lot of people it’s the other way around. I never really make sketches of the dogs. I’ll have an idea and start researching a breed, like the Yorkshire terrier. I’ll look at a lot of pictures online or I’ll look at dog books. Then I build forms of the dogs intuitively.
How did you start using the animal theme?
It’s funny because everyone always asks if I have a dog and I don’t. I loved the film Marie Antoinette. When I started researching the Rococo period I found that that’s when they really started breeding those dogs specifically for show. A lot of the dogs that are bred today are almost bred in our image; they sometimes refer to it as “eugenics”. Now we’re dressing them, and it’s just becoming crazy.
I also thought dogs were a good platform. The idea seemed funny to me. I wanted there to be some way to enter the piece, something recognizable. Before I was making these sculptures that didn’t have clearly defined imagery, and I wanted something really specific because I’d never worked like that before.
They are definitely engaging. Maybe that’s because they have a face.
Some of them do. Some of them have assholes instead!
Do you work on several pieces simultaneously?
I do. I work out a process where I usually have three or four going at a time because the slip has to set up. Otherwise there’s a lot of waiting. When I was working on the museum show I had about nine pieces going. That caused me to lose a piece because I just pushed it too hard, but I wanted to get as many finished as possible. I wanted it to look like a store, as if you were going to register for your wedding and pick out awful crystal glasses or something like that. I think the installation is kind of alluring and repulsive at the same time.
Do you think it is difficult to be a successful artist in Austin? Do you feel successful?
I don’t know if you ever feel successful. I do feel successful, but I think it is very hard. Houston and Dallas are so close. Houston is the fourth or fifth largest art market, and I think you really have to tap into one of those. I hate talking about money but you really can’t sell work in Austin for as much as you could in Houston or Dallas or Los Angeles or New York. But I think it is changing and it is getting better. Things are getting a lot more interesting here. Austin’s growing. I moved here from California, it seems like now I’m talking to people all the time that have moved here from California, and now I’m hearing “Those damn Californians!”.
I think a lot of people are moving to Austin because of the lifestyle. I love living here, and I want to stay here, but so does everyone else. I heard some statistic that said there were more people with PhDs working in coffee houses here than any other city. People come here and get their graduate degrees and they don’t want to leave.
Do you feel like being in 20 to Watch is really going to give your career a big boost?
I sure as hell hope so! If this doesn’t do it?! (Laughs). I think there’s a lot of initial energy that comes from the show, and I’ve just acknowledged “I have to work this!” I put my website up right before the show, and I’ve been getting a really good response. The exhibit will be traveling for over a year, so I’m really interested to see what happens.
20 to Watch is open at the Austin Museum of Art until May 11, 2008.
http://www.amoainteractive.org/newartinaustin2008/
www.stephaniewagner.com