Beyond Physical: Sharon Kopriva Speaks

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

She spoke of visiting the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, and it was fun to imagine Sharon Kopriva examining the artistic possibilities of centuries-old Sicilian corpses. In the same breath she said it wasn’t until she went to Palermo that she understood her grandfather’s garden. He planted orange trees, and fennel, and other plants she discovered to be in abundance there in the city of his birth.


Sharon Kopriva, Riding the Pices Moon, 2013, Mixed media on photographic print, 42 x 49 (Courtesy of Deborah Colton Gallery)

It was unnecessary for Art in America to call our attention to forest imagery in Kopriva’s art. For years it’s been evident that nature is on an equal footing with the longstanding themes of death and Catholic religious mythology. Arguably, forest landscape intermingled with gothic cathedral architecture has precisely the same connotations as sculptural mummified religious figures. They serve as referents to actuality that is inexplicable and transcendent. On a recent studio visit I learned the following:

Virginia Billeaud Anderson: After a number of years of incorporating nature into your work, the landscapes should now be thought of as established orthodoxy. Self-portraiture on the other hand, numerous examples of which appear in your solo exhibition Illuminations (at Deborah Colton Gallery through June 26), is relatively new. It’s my assessment that depictions of your flying nude body in paintings such as Time Traveling and Riding the Pisces Moon, similarly to those of dogs that fly through forests and gothic cathedrals, originate from something buried in your psyche. This will probably piss a few people off, but have you ever floated out of your body?

Sharon Kopriva: Only one other person has ever asked me that - Walter Hopps.

VBA: The late Walter Hopps organized your solo exhibition at the Menil Collection in the year 2000.

SK: I floated through the walls. My out of body experience took place almost twenty years ago when I was in the hospital. I realize now that if I had not been there in the hospital I probably would not be here today. The thing I remember most as I look back was an incredible freedom, and I recall having absolutely no fear. It is the only time I remember flying THROUGH anything, and it was different than any dream I have ever had. It was very real. I do remember hearing my name called, and called again, and I came back to a doctor who looked more anxious than I was.

VBA: My father did that when he was a kid. He slipped through an inner tube, and found himself up in the sky looking at his body on the pier, and he told me he saw the older kids who were supposed to be watching him crying and screaming. Then he was back in his body vomiting water and crying. Surely Hopps recognized this in your art.

SK: That conversation with Walter was a very brief but memorable moment when he asked me if I had ever “traveled.” Walter was special, on the edge of many things. He sometimes called in the middle of the night. For him time was eternal.

VBA: Even if you hadn’t admitted to floating around the hospital, openness to extra-dimensional reality is easily detected in the sculptural dead, decaying and mummified figures, and paintings of ghosts and phantom dogs. Have you experienced other things not of this world?

SK: Pop, the man who raised Gus, appeared to me after he died. I saw him clearly. He had something important to tell me. It was very personal, advice I followed. I think we all have these opportunities to communicate. Most of the time, we do not allow them to happen. Your questions have allowed me to think about the few times in my life when I reached beyond the physical. They are being revisited in my memory.


Sharon Kopriva, From Dust Thou Art, 1997, Papier-mâché and mixed media, 54 x 23 x 39 (Collection of Nancy Reddin Kienholz)

VBA: It’s well known that travels in Peru shaped the rotting-mummy aesthetic in your art. I traveled that entire country with my archaeology group, so I recognize how closely derived your sculptures are from their Peruvian mummy sources. It was unexpected to see the open pits at Nazca, and mummies with hair preserved and textile wrappings remarkably un-faded, the colors of which by the way account for the ocher, reds, and earth tones in your art. Archaeological interest though was not my sole reason for going to Peru. As you know, Peru is considered the most significant area on the planet for extra terrestrial sightings, and I figured if that is real and it probably is, then it’s the most important thing anyone could talk about, so I went there to talk to Peruvians about their experiences, and heard some marvelous stories. Be assured Robert Boyd will receive a few complaints about silly ass interview questions, but have you had any extra terrestrial encounters?

SK: My experiences in Peru were totally wonderful, but unfortunately remained earthbound. I have not abandoned the possibility of experiences at a later date. I did see the Nazca lines which some believe are the work of extra terrestrials.

VBA: I was certain I would die seeing those lines, kept waiting for the plane’s single propeller to malfunction.

SK: And the planes make those scary loops and turns. I would love to talk more about Peru with you, and although I have not seen extra terrestrials, I believe I experienced an earlier life, which might have been in Peru. We saw the mummies when we first went there in 1982, an elderly guide took us to the burials, and we saw bones, bleached by the sun, thrown everywhere. There were whole limbs, hair, sculls, and of course, missing was the pottery the thieves took, and the wonderful woven cloths. On our next trip almost 25 years later, that spot was "cleaned up," there were still a few bones off in the distance, but the site was suddenly organized. There is a picture of it in my New Orleans Ogden Museum exhibition catalog.

VBA: Masterful is the only word to express the manner in which you capture knotty leg joints and muscles in three-dimensional renderings of your Peruvian hounds Luna, Pluto and Thor. I once saw a superb bronze of Thor with the figure twisted as if about to chase its tail, which reached to Degas’ level of observation and nuance. But the way you distorted your dogs’ images in the Seven Deadly Sins installation at Project Row Houses in 2011 was shameful. Spread through the row house were dog sculptures meant to represent the seven human transgressions. In the rear of the house was Gluttony asleep on the floor, in the form of an obese stingray, surrounded by Frito bags, Big Mac containers and dog shit. You disgraced those animals.

SK: One day I’ll do another sculpture series of the dogs, probably in bronze. Gus and I are forever watching our dogs spin around and interact with each other. Long ago we decided they have all the same qualities as humans when dealing with each other. So when I was invited to do an installation at Row Houses, it was Gus who actually suggested I use my sculptured dogs as actors to demonstrate the sins. What fun. I managed to reserve the only house still divided into rooms, and off we went. Humor is good. I have so often seen my dogs demonstrate envy and greed, of course gluttony and lust. And I have seen anger and vanity.


Sharon Kopriva, Insomniacs Nightmare, 2010-11, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 68 x 40 (Courtesy of Deborah Colton Gallery)

VBA: The thought of you arranging doggie excrement in the row house brings to mind Kienholz with whom you studied after graduate school. As an art history student I was haunted by my first encounter with Kienholz’s The State Hospital, which must have required meticulous manipulation of materials to construct the diseased and decaying figures, as well as unpleasant installation of bloody, urine-stained mattresses. When you handle, complexly, animal bones, clay, cloth, and papier-mâché or arrange sculptural tableau such as in The Confessional are you conscious of Ed Kienholz’s influence?

SK: I am very aware of the Kienholz’s influence. I also knew Ed Kienholz through art history books long before I met him and Nancy. It was Ed who inspired me to move into the more complex installations and multi figure pieces, he continually pushed me to explore new territory. The Confessional was one of my first multi figure works, and perhaps my most important piece to date. I’m grateful to both Ed and Nancy for moving me to a new level. How lucky to not only get to meet my heroes but to become so close.

VBA: Perhaps even more influential than Kienholz was your sculpture teacher James Surls, whom I had the opportunity to meet in 2010 when I wrote a newspaper article about one of his exhibitions. Let me remind you of 2005 when Gus Kopriva organized the group exhibition Still Crazy After All These Years to celebrate Lawndale Art Center’s 25th anniversary, and to evoke the dissipated art student environment of the University of Houston Lawndale studio. As much as the event honored the U of H Lawndale and the subsequent Lawndale Art Center, it was a tribute to James Surls who set everything in motion. I came across an Art in America article from the late eighties in which Surls was quoted as saying he “exploited” his students by arranging exhibitions so they could interact with collectors and curators to experience how “real” artists conducted themselves. In my estimation Prey for Us, your sculpture of an altar boy figure over which a shadow image of a predatory cleric was projected, was a focal point of the show.

SK: Wow, Still Crazy! You aren’t leaving any stones unturned. That was a great show. I saw that exhibition as a chance to re-live history. As you know, the old Lawndale was a separate animal from Lawndale Art Center, it was part of the university and directly involved the students. James Surl's soul was all over it. I was there in 1979 when we put the first coats of white paint over the yellow walls of that old cable factory. Even after Surls moved on, his spirit stayed. The new Lawndale is a wonderful alternative exhibition space, vital to this city, and now has a history of its own. Lawndale and the MFA exhibition Fresh Paint were responsible for kicking off the careers of many young artists in Houston.

VBA: I recently saw some of your wall-mounted relief works at the Spring Street Studios exhibition and witnessed how their mysterious quality silenced a few viewers. You achieved the meditative intensity required to re-direct thoughts to life, death and the nature of reality, which for you obviously stretches beyond the physical.

SK: The four small works at Spring Street were done originally for an exhibit in India. I think we all have the capacity to think or be "beyond physical." I also feel most of us do this intuitively rather than consciously. And I think that many things come forth through art that may not have through the spoken word. Images do come that are sometimes totally conscious and sometimes not. I’m especially interested in art that is beyond real, surreal and most often spiritually motivated. I love the art historical trail through romanticism and symbolism, and believe many of the artists were reaching into metaphysical states in their visions, in search of the spiritual and the sublime.

VBA: You are speaking about the 2011 Mumbai gallery exhibition Phantoms and Milestones in which the ghost dogs appeared with depictions of historically significant events related to struggles for liberty. I’ve not yet been to India, but I’m drawn to the Hindu notion of an energy or force that connects all living and inanimate things, and one day hope to see Banaras where Hindus go to prepare for passage to the unknown reality beyond the borders of life, and pray to escape rebirth. Sharon, you already mentioned a possible past life in Peru and in a 1996 interview you stated “everything cycles.” Explain more about how reincarnation fits into your philosophy.

SK: Cycles of life interest me probably more than any other condition of our existence. I think all of my art is related to cycles in one way or another. Long before India I saw the cycles clearly in Peru. The mummy forms in my sculptures come out of the cycles there. In Australia, I also saw evidence of transformation and cycles in the aboriginal life and art, as I did in India. I do not know if all people reincarnate, but I believe some might. I do not know if I will, but I believe I could. There might be complicated reasons about why and how, but I do believe it happens. Matter is not created or destroyed, it is transformed and recycled. But that's the physical part. There are places where I have stepped where I feel I have been before, particularly in Peru. That's the spiritual part. In Australia, beings are believed to move in and out of inanimate objects. I find that fascinating. A rock may possess the spirit that will become a person and a person's spirit may yet become one with a rock or a tree or an animal. I didn’t have much time to spend in India but hope to return and experience more of that land and culture and learn more about how it fits into the "whole" picture. I do not believe the spiritual part of a person disappears. Some think we just cease to exist, some we either go to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. I think we might not all do the same thing. I believe the souls of some float around earth, some because they cannot figure out where to go, some because they choose to or have unfinished business. I believe some might take on a new form and cycle again.


Sharon Kopriva, Joan of Arc, 1988, Papier-mâché, burned wood, mixed media, 72 x 36 x 28 (Menil permanent collection)

VBA: The years haven’t dimmed my memory of your Menil show. Why did the sculpture Joan of Arc unsettle me?

SK: The Joan of Arc sculpture is one of three of my works that entered the Menil Collection. I think Walter and Mrs. de Menil chose this work together to be donated by Edward and Nancy Kienholz. Mrs. de Menil was especially moved by the female martyrs. She personally chose Catherine's Wheel to have a permanent home at the museum. And I think of the series of martyrs whose legends found their way into my studio in the mid to late 80's, Joan was my favorite, and she is most people's favorite. It's her story, her role as an early, strong feminist that moves us. She was caught up in politics, first a hero, then proclaimed a heretic and burned at the stake in her teens, thanks to the Catholic Church, then 400 yeas later, proclaimed a Saint. Surely she had out of body experiences, had to be in a trance when she led the army into battle and when she was ablaze. In fact, don't you think all of our martyrs experienced religious induced trances? I think Joan's story is so compelling because she is in regular history books. That puts a mark of “TRUE Reality" on her that I do not believe others have. As part of the process of making Joan I actually set her on fire. A faint smell of that burn remains. Martyrs have always held a special place for me. As a child, I wondered and hoped if put to the test, I could risk my own life for a cause. I have seen real martyrs in my life, like those who acted to help others without thinking of their own safety, silently without needing glory, such as those in 9/11.

VBA: Not martyred, but known for bizarre self-mortifying, was Rose of Lima, on whom you based an important sculpture. It seems her head is in the Basilica in Lima, “uncorrupted” like the head of Catherine in Siena, which I saw a few years ago. Rose wanted to suffer at the saintly intensity of Catherine, so she wore a spiked crown on her head to endure a crown of thorns, and was dead not surprisingly by 31, after which the required miracles made her the first saint to be canonized in the Americas. Did you see Rose in Lima?

SK: Of course, Rose of Lima is so loved in Peru. Yes, I visited the beautiful Church which houses her relic. I have visited it twice. The people are very proud of their special saint. The Cathedral was filled with worshipers the times we went. Rose was a beautiful woman who worked hard to destroy her beauty. You mentioned Catherine, and there are many saints whose bodies are believed not to have decomposed, I have a book, I think it is The Incorruptibles. My Saint Rose of Lima sculpture is in the collection of the museum in Lima. Love that city!


Sharon Kopriva, Saint Rose of Lima, 2006, Papier-mâché, mixed media, approximately 50 x 30 (Courtesy of Deborah Colton Gallery)

VBA: Those shoes! You’re never more perverse then when devising shoes for the religious figures. When I was a kid in Catholic school, the nuns wore black leather lace-up shoes beneath their floor length habits, which to me looked ridiculous. And the priests’ heavy leather shoes seemed ill-suited to their long robes. Comment on the shoes.

SK: It is getting harder to find those nun shoes. All the kids are now in sneakers. The priests’ etc., are a bit easier to find. Once Gus left a pair of damp shoes outside the door to dry out and when he came home they were on a bishop. (I thought he was throwing them away) They looked great on my sculpture and Gus got a new pair of shoes. I have actually spent a great deal of time working on and making correct clothing, rings, shoes and even the belt buckles on my Catholic figures. I have a very good friend who is an ex-nun and enjoys helping me research these details. It is important that they be correct, and I love the research.

VBA: We know from statements you’ve made that the religious sculptures are not a condemnation of the church’s canon as dead or stuck in the past, as has been critically asserted, and that to interpret the art as a denouncement of the church and your Catholic upbringing is overly simplistic. You did say the figures are frozen in time performing rituals that you witnessed when younger, and that in each piece you are searching to try to understand yourself. Essentially, the mummy sculptures, akin to your fantasy landscapes, invite us to contemplate the ultimate enigma, where do we come from and where are we going, simply put, they encode our spiritual search. In that bodily putrefaction, recycling, consciousness, and the eternal imagination are part of the universe’s energy, the artworks facilitate deeper levels of awareness.

SK: Yes, the figures are frozen in time. I liken them to the bodies of saints that refuse to decompose. Years ago the Church sucked us in with ritual and fear, bells rang and we beat our chests and felt holy. All of that fear and ritualistic participation are in my religious figures. They are frozen in time performing their acts of religion. They similarly denote the death and ritual close to the surface in primitive societies. The art signifies my search for self knowledge, an attempt to reach a higher state. My forests as cathedrals, with tree branches superimposed over church architecture, reflect broadening of my religion, an expansion of my spirituality.


Sharon Kopriva, Cathedral Green, 2012, Oil and mixed media on photo canvas, 81 x 186 x 2.5 (Courtesy of Deborah Colton Gallery)

VBA: In 2012 the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans mounted From Terra to Verde: The Art of Sharon Kopriva, a survey of works created between 1982 and 2012. At the time curator Bradley Sumrall wrote that the exhibition reveals “the breadth and unity of her career.” Was it fine to look back on thirty years of artistic expression?

SK: It was so wonderful to look back at thirty years, all in one spot, one clean, lit spot. Bradley did such a wonderful job in preparing the exhibition, he worked on it for a full year, even traveled to my home in Idaho where we hiked my favorite trail and he really "got" the place and understood how it became such an important influence on me in the last ten years. Back to the question: I was looking at the path my life and art had traveled through thirty years and decided to arrange the show to begin in the early 80's underground in beautiful, spiritual Peru, move through my examination of my life and religion, and end with nature imagery represented by paintings such as Cathedral Green. It clarified where I am and where I had been, and the lovely closure was that it mentally created space for whatever comes next, in my own time. There were works in that exhibit that I had not seen in many years and reunited with. I guess we should call it the family reunion, when all the kids come home. Virginia, some might find it surprising that I publicly discussed those personal out of body experiences, but what the heck! Those experiences are part of my life and my art.

Houston's Favorite Art From 2012

Robert Boyd

The votes are in--the people have spoken. Below are the most popular exhibits, performances and art fairs as chosen by an internet poll. There were 329 responses (of which 72 had to be disqualified*). Here's what you all thought was the best art of the year in Houston.

Favorite Exhibits

 
Christian Marclay, Grey Drip Door (The Electric Chair), 2006, synthetic ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 94 3/8" x 51 1/4" from the exhibit Silence

1. Silence at the Menil Museum with 28 votes
2. Richard Serra, Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, Menil Museum with 26 votes
3. tie: Hillerbrand+Magsamen , eState Sale at the Art League Houston and Aaron Parazette, Flyaway at the Art League Houston with 20 votes each
4. Lisa Chow and Y.E. Torres, Once there was, once there wasn't: Two tales from the minds of Lisa Chow & Y. E. Torres at ARC Gallery with 19 votes
5. Flying Solo at the Art League Houston with 16 votes
6. tie: Debra Barrera, Kissing in Cars, Driving Alone at Moody Gallery; Staring at the Wall: The Art of Boredom at Lawndale Art Center; and James Turrell, Twilight Epiphany at Rice University with 15 votes each
7. tie: WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath at the MFAH; Geoff Hippenstiel at Devin Borden Gallery; and Emily Peacock, You, Me & Diane at Lawndale Art Center with 14 votes each
8. tie: James Ciosek, Human Hamster Wheel at Lawndale Art Center; In Plain Sight at McClain Gallery; [Hx8] at Station Museum;YE Torres and Erin Joyce, Raised in the Wild: Memories of a Bad Unicorn at the East End Studio Gallery; and Eric Zimmerman, Endless Disharmony & Telltale Ashes at Art Palace with 13 votes each
9. tie: Debra Barrera, Drive Me There and Back Again at Blaffer Art Museum Window Into Houston; Sasha Dela, The Emotional Life of a Spy at the Art League Houston; Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the CAMH; Laura Lark, The Livable Forest at Devin Borden Gallery; Peter Lucas, Voyager Found at Lawndale Art Center; and David Politzer, When You're Out There at the Houston Center for Photography with 12 votes each
10. tie: Adela Andea, Primordial Gardens at the Art League Houston; Jamal Cyrus, STACKS residency at the Art League Houston; Sandy Ewen, Projection and Amplification at ARC Gallery; The Big Show at Lawndale Art Center; Lisa Marie Hunter, Camouflage at the Art League Houston; Phillip Pyle II, STACKS residency--Black Friday at the Art League Houston; M'Kina Tapscott STACKS residency--New Soil: Tessellations of Dark Matter at the Art League Houston; Julia Zarate, In Somnis Veritas at the East End Studio Gallery

An additional 357 (!) exhibits got votes, so congratulations all around.

Favorite Performances

 
Emily Sloan, Carrie Nation Hatchetation, performance at Notsuoh

1. Emily Sloan, Carrie Nation Hatchetation at the The Lone Star Performance Explosion with 23 votes
2. Zubi Puente and Y.E. Torres, Let's Play Doctor at the Continuum Live Art Series/Avant Garden with 20 votes
3. tie: Jim Pirtle performance at Notsuoh as part of The Lone Star Performance Explosion and Tina McPherson, Love Exorcist at the Continuum Live Art Series/Avant Garden with 16 votes
4. Non Grata, Force Majeure at the The Lone Star Performance Explosion with 14 votes
5. tie: Nathaniel Donnett, ZZzzzzzz at the Art League Houston and Nancy Douthey, Chicken 'N Dinner at the  The Lone Star Performance Explosion with 13 votes
6. tie: Emily Sloan, Is that a Baby Ruth in the Swimming Pool? at Darke Gallery and Militia "Malice" Tiamat, Know Thy Self, Continuum Live Art Series/Avant Garden with 12 votes
7. tie: Daniel- Kayne, Three Day Fast at the The Lone Star Performance Explosion; Orion Maxted performance at Notsuoh at the The Lone Star Performance Explosion; and Non Grata , [performance at Avant Garden], The Lone Star Performance Explosion with 10 votes each
8. tie: Jonatan Lopez performance at Avant Garden during the The Lone Star Performance Explosion and 1KA performance at the The Lone Star Performance Explosion with 9 votes each
9. tie: Jamal Cyrus, Texas Fried Tenor at CAMH; Miao Jiaxin, I Have a Dream at Box 13; and Pope L., Costume Made of Nothing at the CAMH with 8 votes each
10. John Pluecker, Antena Books: Pop-Up Bookstore and Literary Experimentation Lab, Project Row Houses with 7 votes

An additional 43 performances got votes. Congratulations all.

Favorite art fairs

1. Texas Contemporary Art Fair with 73 votes
2. Pan Art Fair with 48 votes
3. Houston Fine Art Fair with 43 votes

A few closing comments. It's not always obvious where the boundary between exhibit and performance is. That was especially the case with with Radical Presence: Black performance in Contemporary Art at CAMH and STACKS at the Art League. Stacks was additionally difficult to deal with because it was, in effect, a series of residencies followed by one-person shows. So do you deal with them separately or as part of a greater show? I split them into separate shows and performances, but several people wrote in STACKS as a combined unit.

The favorite art fair question was admittedly a bit of a joke. 48 votes for the Pan Art Fair probably comes close to the entire attendance of the Pan Art Fair. But thanks everyone who voted.

* Unfortunately, there appeared to be some ballot stuffing activity. I created an algorithm to detect ballot stuffing, and while I probably missed a few, the 72 votes that were disqualified were almost certainly all from ballot stuffing. It's very disappointing that anyone would do something like this. I don't  understand it--there is no prize being given here. It's like cheating to win the election for junior high class president--and about as mature. All I wanted to do with this poll was to see what shows people liked best. The results however are almost certainly somewhat skewed by self-dealing on the part of certain people. You know who you are (and so do I). The result of these shenanigans is that I will probably not be running this poll again next year (or ever). It's not worth it to deal with the cheaters.

Been Doing This Kind of Thing Since Before Christ: A Talk with Gus Kopriva

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

As juror of Archway Gallery’s Seventh Annual Juried Art Exhibition, Gus Kopriva discussed the process by which he selected 39 out of the 194 artworks submitted, and while he addressed the gallery crowd I wondered how long it would take him to realize he wouldn’t be able to hold his bottle of Shiner and the microphone at the same time that he handed out the awards. Not long—beer on floor. “Ah been doing this kind of thing since before Christ,” Kopriva said, “and if space had allowed, I would have chosen all of them.” But it was his job to choose, so he chose what “connected with him in that time and place.”

From years of paying attention, I can say unequivocally that Kopriva is the only Houston gallery guru who doesn’t look tense. So when I learned he would serve as Archway’s juror, I suggested we do an interview that would touch on his role as judge, and also inform readers about his other art-related “interests” - his collection, gallery, curatorial projects and lectures. “Let’s do it,” Gus said, which led to several visits during which we discussed the juries, art prizes, curating, dealing, collecting and more.


Gus Kopriva, Juror - Archway Gallery’s Seventh Annual Juried Art Exhibition (through July 29)

Virginia Billeaud Anderson: You awarded the jury prizes at Archway Gallery exactly one day after Lawndale Art Center’s guest juror broke tradition and divided their annual juried Big Show’s $3000 prize evenly among all of the participating artists, so that none of the kiddies would feel rejection and all would know how precious they are. But I’m not the only one to feel skeptical about the Lawndale juror’s decision, I saw an artist to whom you’ve given multiple exhibitions roll her eyes and say, “How democratic.”

Gus Kopriva: I agree with what that juror was doing, with his social concept. The jurying process is soooo subjective, it’s impossible for one’s choices not to be affected by what’s in one’s mind at that time and place, so if I could choose I would accept all, give everyone honorable mentions, and no prizes. But since Archway honored me with the invitation to judge, I followed the rules. There are millions of different criteria for selecting and hanging a show.

VBA: Patrick Palmer who preceded you as an Archway juror told me he selected works that appealed to him aesthetically, but also worked well collectively to make a strong show. Remember Patrick is a teacher. Should skill count for something?

GK: I believe skill is very important, but consider Outsider art where untrained artists assemble found objects into sculptural pieces that are pleasing to viewers. As you know, Lawndale’s guest curator did no different from the late Walter Hopps, who when he was invited to judge a San Francisco exhibition, insisted all the artists be included, and because Walter was a highly respected curator, the organizers reluctantly went along with his decision and were forced to show thousands of pieces of art. Of course Walter was never again asked to judge a show. In principal I agree with Walter, but there are practical considerations - space limitations, organization rules, and importantly the artists’ expectations. Artists entered the Lawndale show expecting certain protocol related to first, second and third place prizes, and I imagine some were annoyed by the outcome.

VBA: There’s irony in the fact that it was Walter Hopps’ directorial and curatorial decisiveness that was responsible for your wife Sharon’s solo exhibition at the Menil, which was a pivotal moment in her career. Did Sharon buy you that dancing Shiva t-shirt on one of her trips to India?

GK: Yea, when she had her Mumbai show. I have a large collection of t-shirts.

VBA: I’ve often wondered how actively you participate in helping Sharon manage her career.

GK: It would be a conflict of interest for me to represent Sharon, other dealers do that.

VBA: Sugar, that’s a half-baked answer, because I know you understand my question. You’re hardly ignorant of the benefits of expert strategy on commercial success, and my question takes nothing away from Sharon’s astounding skill and creativity. Do you guide Sharon in her decisions, give advice, unofficially, on such things as gallery negotiations, or pricing, or media interaction, or which essay to include in a catalog?

GP: I’m an unofficial advisor.

VBA: I saw a full page ad in Vogue that announced Sharon’s Monterrey museum exhibition. Did you do that?

GK: Uh, I did the logistics. Lynet and I went to Mexico to try to arrange a traveling show, and we visited three museums where I showed them what I had done with other shows, like Shanghai, and I also showed them some of Sharon’s work which resulted in the Museo Metropolitana de Monterrey wanting to do Sharon’s Gothic Exposure exhibition, but it was their idea. So yes I advise. But I didn’t have anything to do with the New Orleans Ogden Museum show, it was all Sharon.

VBA: Pop didn’t raise a fool, did he Gus? You have been having a blast playing the role of curator, and by now must have organized several hundred exhibitions, many of which put you in collaboration with leading curators and scholars. Your shows have been critically noted, and in fact President George Bush wrote a complimentary letter in praise of the show you brought to the Shanghai Art Museum. I’ll never forget Still Crazy after All These Years, the 2005 exhibition you did for Lawndale Art Center’s 25th anniversary. That crowd was nostalgic and drunk.

GP: Lawndale gave me full curatorial freedom.

VBA: Still Crazy at Lawndale must have been logistically simple compared to exhibits in other countries where there have been complications, such as the people in Athens disobligingly deciding to riot in the streets at the time you were trying to show them some art.

GK: That 2012 Athens show Western Sequels: Art from the Lone Star State was scheduled to open at the National Painting School, but the opening was delayed a couple of days by a transportation strike. Then riots broke out on the plaza by the capital building, near our hotel, with tear gas and flying pieces of marble, surprisingly when we finally opened there were a few hundred people who attended. You know we finance these shows ourselves with little sponsorship from the government. When we showed in Havana, we were not only unsponsored, but fairly illegal, because of the embargo. Unable to get passports stamped, we had to travel to Cuba by way of Mexico, and I shipped the art via Frankfurt, and when we arrived at the Museo de Humboldt in Havana we found the city had no nails and wires so we had to use fishing line to hang the art. Things got worse when Wayne Gilbert got himself interviewed by CNN because that made us conspicuous, so we made Wayne fly home on a separate flight. Then our non-sponsored, illegal group encountered a prestigious MFA Museum-sponsored group in the plaza, and that made things more uncomfortable. I have so many stories. Keep in mind I did the Leipzig show in the former German Democratic Republic, what used to be East Germany. For one of the shows in Peru the container arrived only one day before the show opened. Talk about stress! When we brought Western Sequels to Istanbul there were riots there too.

VBA: It seems Cuba wasn’t the only western-embargoed location you decided couldn’t do without seeing Texas art. Last year I met an Iranian-born artist who told me you asked her to help you arrange an exhibition in Tehran. I can just imagine those mullahs hissing that your art is Satanic.

GK: I wanted a show in Tehran. I like Persian, and Iranian contemporary art. The theme could be “Art by Republican Artists,” with horses, cowboys and Indians. What a show. The choice of art would not matter, what would be significant is that we would be the first to do such a thing since the time of the Shah. But the permits and government hassles would be unbearable. It needs to be done though. Maybe Israel could sponsor us. We actually had an exhibition planned for Cairo, but the new government installed by the Muslim brotherhood fired our museum director and curators, and then there were the Egyptian riots, and no one wanted to travel so we cancelled.

VBA: Gustav, you have a charming way of using the imperial “We” like the papacy and the queen of England when describing your projects.

GK: This is so fun. I still want to do the show in Egypt.

VBA: You opened Redbud Gallery in 1999, which is known for giving upstarts a chance, and taking less than the standard commission.

GK: We opened in 1999 and we’ve survived vice squad raids, censorship, and condescending critics. We show dead, live and just starting artists, all mediums, whatever I like and want to show. In the early years I only took 10% of the sale, but after about eight years I was losing too much money, so now it’s a 50-50 split. We don’t concentrate on sales, my goal is to show art, but the art sells itself. I keep the prices low, and there have been many times the shows sold out.

VBA: When you were working on the recent John Biggers exhibition you told me you thought it was one of Redbud Gallery’s most significant.

GK: Because it was a survey show with works that spanned from the beginning of his career in the 1940s to his death, and as far as I could tell, no Houston commercial gallery had done a solo Biggers show in twenty five years. I worked with curators and local collectors and researched him thoroughly, actually read six illustrated books to pull it together. I’m equally proud of some of my early shows like the inaugural exhibition that showed the 84 year old unknown sculptor Gladys Gostick. Gladys showed a collection of three dimensional birds in stone, wood and copper, and we sold out. That was one of my most satisfying shows. Know what that woman did? Sat on her welding torch and burned her ass. Another really satisfying show was the West Coast assemblage artist George Herms. He had showed at MOMA and done things in the early sixties, but had not had a show in years. We sold out, and a Philadelphia gallery picked him up. He’s big again.

VBA: Do you think your out-going personality helps with commercial gallery success? You are gracious to everyone, even non-art buying nobodies, unlike a few out there who won’t even bother to speak, not even to those of us who wrote newspaper or magazine articles about their stuff. I don’t understand how those people ever manage to sell a piece of art behaving like that.

GK: I’ve seen it. It’s possible they’re trying to act like art should be some elitist status, trying to emulate how things are in New York and Paris, playing that role. Being friendly is important. I’m nice to everyone. Look, I grew up in a trailer house. Virginia let me show you my beginning. You see these burned up buildings in this photograph. This is where I was born. It was destroyed by American bombs in the war, I played in that rubble. My grandmother was killed in this building, here near the church. She drowned trying to take sanctuary in the basement, the water pipes broke. My mother watched while they carried out the bodies, my grandmother was wearing a camel hair coat and opal jewelry. For years my mother hated camel coats and opals. My mother married my step father, Frank Kopriva, Pop, who she met after the Americans occupied Pirmasens in 1945. We left there in 1955.

VBA: There’s nothing elitist about your art collection. Nothing pretentious, you’ll purchase from artists nobody ever heard of if the art pleases you, and I’ve often admired the fact that you collect Durer, Rembrandt and other Old Master prints, even if some contemporary art-biased snobs sniff at that. Your prints are lovely and it shows you have taste.

GK: I’ve been collecting for 30 years, have over 1,850 pieces. The collection also includes German Expressionism, French Symbolism, American WPA, and of course contemporary. They are mostly works on paper. Basically I buy art that I believe is different, or extremely well crafted, and art history plays a large part in what I buy, but the collection is not heavy in abstraction, except for a few art historical abstract pieces. It includes Miro, de Kooning, and Guston. I purchase from individuals, auctions, galleries, estates, and also from the artists who show in my Redbud Gallery. Our German Expressionist works formed the exhibition Broken Brushes, and it has traveled to small museums and universities around the U.S. and to Berlin.

I want to talk about the museum in Germany. We are about to begin a ten year loan of eighty-seven of the German Expressionist pieces to a regional museum in Salzwedel. The collection will be housed in a renovated turn of the century school house, a magnificent building in a medieval town in the old East Germany, called Art House Salzwedel. I’m loaning works on paper by Otto Dix, George Grosz, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Paul Klee, Kokoschka, Kollwitz, Franz Marc, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, and many others, and the collection will form the core of the museum’s holdings. I partnered with Salzwedel’s mayor as a consultant, an idea guy, to help her promote tourism, and suggested she start the art museum. I helped her chose the building, it had been empty for 10 years, and she got it back from the city for back taxes. The site will include a restaurant, and archives and a tourist bureau. And it’s well funded. The German government gave us a million Euros and local banks contributed, so we began the nonprofit Foundation for Art House Salzwedel to handle renovation funding and operations funding. Kunsthaus Salzwedel opens this fall.

VBA: You lecture frequently about your collection.

GP: I lecture specifically on the business of collecting art, and I do it at universities. The business part is crucial, and it’s not being taught. Artists must deal in entirely different ways with collectors, curators, and galleries, and they need to know how, they need to know the business, public relations and marketing, the protocols and practices, and unwritten expectations. MFA should create courses on this.

VBA: Do you miss being an engineer?

GK: Well, not really. I’m still consulting some, very part time, for my Middle East clients.

VBA: A few years back I tried to pick your brain about energy stocks, wondered if you had held on to your Dow Chemical stock, and you told me you were only buying art.

GK: Art has a proven history. I’m buying art and real estate. It lets me control it. With real estate I’ve never gone wrong. If you can afford it, buy it.

VBA: The media reported you’re selling the 1923 Houston Heights Theater building for $1.9 million.

GK: After 30 years Sharon and I are hoping to sell the theater. If all goes well the new buyers will turn it into a top notch cultural center, with theater and music, and a bar. We’re passing the torch. When we bought it in the 80s it had been fire bombed, was a burned out hulk, sat vacant for 10 years. We renovated and saved it, and made it a historical landmark. We have a feasibility contract signed for it to be a regional art venue. Sharon and I went to school in the Heights. We started out with nothing. We had $500 between us when we got married, I thought she had money, but it turned out I was mistaken. We lived in run down areas in the Heights, and it all came back. We’ve made some wise decisions.

VBA: One of your tenants recently confirmed the rumor that he is exiting your 11th street building which holds Redbud Gallery and Sharon’s studio, which will leave you with a significant amount of additional space. When I asked you three weeks ago what you intended to do with that space you gave me a baloney answer that it would relate to art. Not talking! Are you ready to announce your plans for the space in your 11th street building?

GK: Can’t talk about, it will be related to the arts.

VBA: Last year when I wrote an article about Sharon she invited me to your home in Idaho.

GK: You should fly up with me on Thursday. Sharon told me to be there for my birthday.