On this week’s show: A profile of artist Ian Cozzens.
Cozzens moved to Providence in 1999, and quickly started making screen prints for bands, art gallery shows, and community events. He also documented the buildings of Providence, using his architectural training to depict a half-demolished mill in Eagle Square and the three smokestacks of a power station on the Providence River. Since then, he moved on to screen prints depicting a single word, including “dissonance” and “QUEERS!” His latest installation at Angell Street Galleries is called “Reality.”
Also, Barnaby Evans and Emily Gray from WaterFire Providence remember the life and work of Rhode Island painter Gretchen Dow Simpson.
Profile excerpts: Providence artist Ian Cozzens
On why he became interested in screen printing
Ian Cozzens: I’d noticed that all these posters were being made in Providence at that time, the Fort Thunder posters, and everybody kind of just putting on tons of shows and making tons of posters. And basically I was like, I want to, I want to play the game. … I want to be in the same space. I want to have something that I can trade and like, you know, here’s how people are sharing art. I want to share art as well.
Why document old buildings by drawing instead of with photography?
Cozzens: The act of drawing is both a physical witnessing because like, as you are moving your pencil along a physical line on the physical paper, it’s almost like tracing. It’s almost like touching the edge and feeling it, and like trying to get it, trying to place it in place. aAnd you’re, and as the drawing progresses, you kind of like, you realize the inaccuracies of it, and you move like closer and closer and closer to putting it all in place. … It doesn’t have the illusion of truth, whereas a photograph is like, oh, this is real. I took a picture. I captured the right thing.
Ian works as an artist mentor at New Urban Arts, an outside-of-school program in Providence for high school students
Cozzens: The classic New Urban Arts premise is that everyone has a creative practice, even if they don’t think of themself as an artist. And that even if this teenager doesn’t go on to become like an “artist,” quote unquote, that bringing creativity and agency to the rest of their life will help the world become a better place and will help everybody have a hand in like shaping the world to be a better place.
The inspiration for Ian’s screenprint of the word “QUEERS!”
Cozzens: I was thinking about the classic “hang in there poster with the cat and – “hang in there baby” or whatever – and in the same realm I was like, what is the role of art? And especially in political art. There’s one option, which is to say like, you know, “smash the fascists,” you know, “punch the Nazi” or whatever. But then you’re still thinking about the Nazi. You still put them on your wall, you know. … And so even just to have on your wall the poster that says “QUEERS!” with an exclamation point and in like, really cool colors.
Why his latest work is the word “Reality”
Cozzens: what can I even make art about at this point? … Wanting to be real about … the unstable nature of reality right now, governmental efforts to like, redefine reality or say like, “this isn’t, this isn’t important.” Or literally with their like anti-trans legislation to be like, “restoring sanity and truthfulness. They love to say like … trans people or whatever are like, trying to make something real that’s not real. And it’s like, well, yes, but that’s kind of the point … not that trans identities aren’t real … but it’s like the act of speaking these things and the act of saying like, “this is what I am,” or “this is who I am,” is part of what brings that into being. And it’s like, your internal nature is yours alone, and only you can know that.
You can find Ian Cozzens’ work at secretdoorprojects.org. His work is part of the Spring Exhibition at Angell Street Galleries in Providence, through May 31.
Interview excerpts: Remembering Gretchen Dow Simpson
Gretchen Dow Simpson was an artist and arts organizer. Her paintings were on the cover of the New Yorker magazine 58 times, and she helped found the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative. She passed away last week at the age of 85. Artscape producer James Baumgartner spoke about Simpson with Barnaby Evans, executive artistic director of WaterFire Providence and Emily Gray, the executive and curatorial assistant at WaterFire.
On Simpson’s paintings and her affinity for New England
Emily Gray: They were very pared down. She was really interested in sort of the flatness of the canvas, and creating a really kind of restrained and quiet, but really impactful composition. I always sort of say that she has this real mastery in light and geometry with her paintings, and she also brought the charm of New England and its clapboard houses and the summers into a really wide audience with her New Yorker career. … She talks about her perseverance and in that drive, in that effort to produce these 58 covers is really a feat. Her work allows us for a moment of pause and this kind of private reflection that she’s having, and she gives us the privilege of having that as well.
On Simpson’s contributions to the Providence art world
Barnaby Evans: Gretchen was a real delight. She was a conversationalist. She was very well read, very thoughtful about the world. Whenever you’d start with a conversation, you’d never know where you’d end up. But always informed to the minute, knew exactly what editorial was just in the New York Times. Fun to be here, an important part of the arts community. Very active with the Providence Art Club, with galleries in Pawtucket, with organizing the arts fair in Pawtucket. She moved her studio to Pawtucket and renovated a building there with Mimo Reilly. She was always interested in what was going on. Very interested in the theater, very interested in dance, very interested in music. Her personality was quirky, bold. She loved getting into sort of a sticky conversation where she would ask those slightly difficult questions and it opened up the conversation in many great ways. We’ll miss her greatly.
Last year, Water Fire Arts Center exhibited a retrospective of Gretchen Dow Simpson’s work called Spaces Across Time, and they have a digital archive of the exhibition.
