obi kaufmann: John Casey. Alone Together

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

John Casey. Alone Together

John Casey in his current studio at the Hive in Downtown Oakland. He hasn't really had time to make any work there yet, so the place is kinda empty. I call this article Alone Together because of the themes we bring up in question #3. -obi

click on images to enlarge

Obi: Was your last show in the City at Receiver Gallery? What drew you to Belljar?

John: I've been in a couple of group shows in SF since my show at Receiver with Martha Sue Harris back in November of 2007. I was in a show a few months back at Upper Playground called "Mixed Messages" and I'm currently in a group show called "You've Got Light In Your Eyes" a group show curated by Meighan O'Toole, editor of the amazing art blog "My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses" (http://myloveforyou.typepad.com/). There are lot's of good folks in that show and I got a mention from it in the SF Weekly (http://www.sfweekly.com/events/youve-got-light-in-your-eyes-1438832).
A few months ago, talented artist Micke Tong began helping Sasha Darling at BellJar line up some shows in the gallery there. I've seen some good shows there including Martha Sue, Olivia Park, and Kevin Taylor, so it was easy to say yes.

Obi: What can we expect at this show?

John: It's a small space so maybe 5-6 framed drawings and I think a three foot cutout, or a sculpture. I haven't really made the final choice yet.

Obi: How do your themes change? For example, your Scarecrow book recently came out but that seems to be made up mostly of lone figures, recently at Swarm we saw more environments. How do your images evolve?

John: Good question. In the book I did a sort of survey of my characters alone (hence the name Scarecrow). In some cases Rowan Morrison publisher Pete Glover designed the book's layout in a way where he juxtaposed drawings on facing pages so that there was an implied interaction or communication between the facing characters. Those interactions are part the inspiration for making multi character drawings. The drawings can still remain clean and minimal but with more that one individual in the picture frame, the narrative can be more complex and interesting.