Nathan Markham

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Manufactured Dissent, Q&A

Thanks to Manufactured Dissent for this interview. June 2009.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Nathan Markham Q&A

Hometown: Born in Louisville, KY 1975. I divided my childhood evenly between Sweetwater, TN near Knoxville and Hendersonville, TN near Nashville.

Currently Resides: South Florida / Broward Co.

Medium: I love Paint. Water based media, minerals, powdered and liquid pigments, clear and iridescent varnish and glazes - metallic spray paint and collage - on canvas, on panel , on paper.

Artist Hero: Niki de Saint Phalle.
Also I learned a lot about teaching painting from Sandra Reed at Savannah College of Art and Design and Jo Shan Ma, her assistant.

Paintings and Drawings I enjoy looking at:
Puvis De Chavannes, Paula Rego, Turner, Redon, Rossetti, Hans Hoffman, Ignes, anybody's sketchbooks.

What's your studio like? Chaotic at the moment.

What are you currently working on? I've really been experimenting with powerful "transient" pigments that can only be covered up with mediums that resist from the backside of a layer. Pigments that rise to the surface, so the first layer of the painting is very important (as it continues to bleed to the surface throughout the process.) Sometimes I collage with pre-dried pieces of acrylic paint scraped from a glass surface. The dried paint stops the bleeding. I used batik dye and wax with ceramic glaze the other day, that was interesting.

What are you currently reading? Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education, Studios by the Sea: Artists of Long Island's East End (Hardcover) and Primary Colours by Serena Mann.

What are you currently listening to? My wife is from Barbados in the Caribbean. And has introduced to me (over 14 years) a fascinating array of old reggae, calypso, and Caribbean folk music. This is my favorite right now, but there are hundreds we've collected: "Carry Go Bring Come," by Justin Hinds & the Dominoes...and I love the guitar sound on Eddy Grant's "Do you Feel my Love." I'm desperately trying to replicate it on my set up at home.

I am also addicted to Freshair.org.uk and their August coverage of the Edinburgh Scotland FRINGE Festival! Funny funny funny...and The Charlie and Lola Soundtrack (I am father of 2).

What's your dream project? Aside from what I'm doing now:

Seriously.
1. Starting a Non-Profit that provides Educational / Arts travel for children of low income families in South Florida. It's really difficult to get field trips that leave the state, it is not a small world after all....authentic travel experiences are usually a common denominator in the lives of kids who have grown up to become adults who give back to their own communities - they have a broader world view. It's not enough to escape poverty - inspiring kids to grow up and end it would be great.

2. Building a summer cottage boathouse studio on lake Papineau in Ontario. Sweet. Maybe an Artist in Residence grant retreat. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1915997

Not so Seriously. Slightly more dreamy.
3. My paintings somehow inspire a musical starring John Cleese, Daniel Day Lewis and Judy Dench!!!! That would be super.

4. Appearing on an Episode of the now over "Monarch of the Glen" TV show.

5. Or owning a really small T-Shirt company that uses quirky one liners. Like "I brake for High-lighters" or "Tacos make it easy" with a picture of a bulldozer on both.

Day job:
Art Educator: Elementary Magnet School -
Subject: 3D Art/Murals/Stagecraft - Teaching partnership with Broward Center for the Performing Arts. During the summer, I work at interesting places, like: Children Services Council funded Summer Arts Camps, Lovewell.org, and Multiple Sclerosis Foundation National Headquarters Lending Library - MSfocus.org

What else are you currently working on? Editing a book of travel journals - I'd like to publish it. I've been fiddling with it for 10 years. I wrote it in 1999-2000, on a "round the world" trip with my wife to 12 different countries.

My wife is a photographer, she documented our entire trip with over 5000 photos and 24 hours of video footage. (This was before we owned digital cameras.)

My recent paintings, video collaboration and show are based on one page from the India portion of those journals and the photos.

Also, I recently graduated with a MS Ed. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Nova Southeastern University.

Favorite Gallery? I'm gonna go big and say - AGO in Toronto and National Galleries of Scotland

Posted by .7717. at 6/22/2009

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

More from NSU!

Nova Southeastern University -
Video Presentation and Reception.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Manufactured Dissent Art Collective: Nathan Markham

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Global Celebration of the Arts NSU

INDIA: BETWEEN MYTH AND MEMORY
April 28th 2009

Contact Nathan Markham: oceandrums@gmail.com

Five Minutes on the Road to Madurai
Excerpt from The Travel Diaries of Nathan Markham

1. In 1999, I sat with my wife staring at Southern India from an unexpected perch: through a speeding, sweat-stained bus window. We had been traveling for days on a packed government run Temple tour for Hindu pilgrims starting and ending in Chennai, India.

2. I was considering our dawn descent in our creaky old bus from the mountain hill station Kodaikanal, in the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu, and the dangerous roads that were ahead. I recalled our highway accident two days before, where we collided with another bus and our driver’s rearview mirror was ripped from the bus and shattered on the pavement. We stopped only to collect the mirror – and continued on.

3. Our government bus moaned and shuttered. It was rocking in and out of danger as my window seemed to lean over the unguarded and crumbling drop-offs – I decided to focus on holding my wife’s hand and a far off waterfall careening from a steep cliff.

4. We sat immediately behind our driver. He was a religious, Hindu man, but unlike his daily forehead thumbprint of ash - his forehead this morning was completely covered in white ash, (Which, in my ignorance of his religion, I assumed meant he had said a really big prayer that morning. And after the first five minutes of our ride that day, I had hoped he did.)

5. He was surrounded by the smoke of burning incense. He had shoved it into the now disabled AC vents on his dashboard. There was a deafening screech of a morning chant playing over the loud speakers from his personal cassette deck.

6. The bus door, next to us was open to the road as we drove, and with no seatbelts on, every turn of the bus driver’s wheel was a reason to curse, and to pray. I leaned into the wind. I noticed it becoming an oven. I watched the road whizzing by, a few feet away. The more dry the air became the closer our bus came to the flat scorching desert.

7. As he drove, the driver argued with the bus luggage boy, an 11 year old, about whether or not he could play a Michael Jackson cassette during our descent. The bus was hurling around corners, missing on-coming traffic by inches. I breathed in deeply the remnants of the incense. The smoke was burning my lungs. I remember thinking this man is spiritually prepared to die today, am I? He refused to play the boy’s tape. I was finally enjoying India. I just couldn’t see flying off a mountain blaring a heart-felt rendering of, “Beat It.”

NATHAN MARKHAM - BIO

Nathan Markham was born in Louisville, KY in 1975 and spent his childhood in several small towns in TN, playing music, drawing and writing stories.

From 1999 – 2001, he backpacked with his wife around the world, collecting images, stories, and videos concerning the migration of the King family from Guyana throughout the British Colonies and Dominion. Nathan created several lengthy diaries during this time documenting his daily experiences – and also attempted to have a great time traveling.

Nathan received his Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing from Savannah College of Art and Design in 1999, and is an artist and educator. He now resides in South Florida, with his wife of 14 years and their two sons. He is currently showing art inspired by his writings and travels. He has recently completed his Master’s in Interdisciplinary Arts at Nova Southeastern University.

Artist Statement
Nathan Markham makes painted journeys through his past travels, confronting globalization as a loss of individual identity. In these latest works, he engages the memory and symbols of India, not as an ambassador, but as a catalyst for collected and eroding content.

Through the combination of staining and resisting pigments, he
re-contextualizes each layer of his travels. His past understanding informs his unwilling future, and like memory, partly controls the final outcome. His paintings pass through many genres of technique, saving and destroying valuable ideas that are sometimes forever obscured in the past layer. Markham mimics time, as he erodes his depiction of memory and the mythology of his travels. Narratives arise of robberies, illnesses, celebrations and near death experiences.

Markham’s approach to picture making is layered, arrested,
and pragmatic. His paintings are his journey through personal mythology, destroyed memories, and visceral technique.