Artist Susan J. Silvester finds a nurturing home in Sacramento
A blue-faced bunny girl clutching a limp, stuffed toy launched an entire series of artwork for Susan J. Silvester that she—and a growing number of fans—adores for its dramatic reflection of her dark, feminine voice.
Animals, imaginary lands, costumes, facial expressions and unusual body forms combine to represent Silvester’s self-proclaimed creepy genre.
The audience doesn’t really know if these forlorn, timeless beings are humans in fuzzy costumes or part human, part animal.
“They are sort of the same,” Silvester says from her home in Sacramento, where she does her digital work when not painting in her Verge Center for the Arts studio space. “I didn’t know that was going to happen but I’m a big fairytale and sci-fi fan (I love Dr. Who), so they’re human but they’re not. It’s creepy. It’s sort of based on medieval costumes that I saw and I learned how to sew. I do them kneeling a lot, so it’s an odd pose, because it’s kind of religious but kids do that a lot.”
Silvester’s first solo show, at Gallery 2110 and the Sacramento Art Complex, will be available to view next month and represents a psychological realm, another space that has to do with deep emotion and feeling. Think Pan’s Labyrinth meets 16th century portraiture.
At first, the art seems so sweet and delicate, and it is, but then it also conjures up feelings of entrapment and childhood confusion.
“I have a female voice, but then, I am a female,” says Silvester. “I just see that in the work, it expresses me. Even though these [faces] are not me they are me, because they are aspects of my personality, pieces of me.”
The first bunny girl was a result of a bad review she received while working on her master’s in painting at Sacramento State.
“Basically I got slammed in my review at school, and I got sad so I decided I’m going to draw people how I want to, and so I did,” she says. “I like people as animals. But it’s faux fur, it’s not real. I’m a vegetarian.”
The campus trees, squirrels and overall environment worked as a muse, as did Silvester’s more than 30 years of experience that ranged from Web design to art fabrication and replication animation.
Some of the particulars of these jobs are incredible. Silvester has built massive fiberglass sculptures for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, created objects like children’s toys for comic strip Family Circle and designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.
Her artistic ability and dark humor came in handy when she worked on Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios. Perhaps more impressive, however, was her work as an art fabricator in New York—her home state—for leading pop artists Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann, Marisol and Lynda Benglis.
“As an artist, especially in New York, you just survive,” she says of the experience. “That was all sort of dark and wacky, so my work is still playful and dark.”
While working on the Back to the Future ride, Silvester decided to go back to computers and stop making large models as she had been for sets and other artists.
“I probably created enough toxic waste to last 100 million years,” she says. “I made a set that was 30-by-70 feet out of that foam that never breaks down and it was huge and disgusting. There were these huge bugs that came out of it. It was horrible. I said that’s it, I’m done with this, and then transitioned into computers. It was a good call.”
Silvester feels her digital work is almost more difficult than painting because she sees every flaw magnified.
“It’s really labor intensive and a lot of people don’t understand but this is all hand drawn,” she says of her digital work. Sometimes I’ll scan in my drawing but then I still have to paint it. I touch every part of that freaking piece. And when you flatten things (in Photoshop) then you have to fix it. I’ll still print something out and will see something and no one else will but I know it’s there. When I started painting, I kind of missed the ‘undo.’”
Silvester paints using mixed media, acrylics and oil. She has also recently incorporated her sculpting skills into her solo genre, sculpting bunny girls using clay and covering them with felt. If she completes the pieces, she may also include them in her show.
“I’m trying to show where I started and where I’m going so it’ll be interesting and help round out the show,” she says.
When she’s not in her studio or feverishly fixing every line and dot on her digital drawings, Silvester is teaching at the Art Institute, a job that has helped her go beyond “just surviving” as she did years ago in New York.
“Now I can do my art because I have that [the teaching],” she says. Silvester teaches color theory, drawing and design at the institute and also instructs senior classes at the Natomas Art Center in Folsom.
The art scene in Sacramento is also more her pace, Silvester says, after honing her career in both New York and Dallas.
“Since I moved here in 2001, the art scene has changed so much,” she says. “It’s expanded but it’s still a core group. I like knowing the different artists and seeing what they’re doing.”
She adds that attending school in Sacramento and having a studio at Verge has also positively affected her work and given her the confidence and feedback she needs.
“It has been a good place for me and we just kind of share ideas and critiques, so it’s really great for artists.”
Check out Gallery 2110 this July to see more of Silvester’s creations. A reception will be held July 13, 2013 from 6 to 9 p.m. Visit Susansilvester.com to follow her work.
Sonny and the Sunsets to appear at Second Saturday Art Walk
Sonny Smith speeds toward Youngstown, Ohio, for a Monday night stopover with enough songs in his pocket to make The Ultimate Fake Book blush. He is accompanied by the Sunsets, his band and primary musical accomplice, now the co-authors of four LPs and a slew of goodies in between. Armed with an array of stand-up routines for the hi-fi (“Maria Bamford, Louis C.K., Patrice O’Neal, Hannibal Buress, David Cross—it’s almost better than music,” says Smith), the ramshackle pop outfit from San Francisco is enjoying business as usual: touring off the latest record. This time around that record would be Antenna to the Afterworld—11 songs of death, love and sci-fi that mark a return to the tumbledown rock ‘n’ roll poise Sonny and the Sunsets evinced on the likes of Tomorrow Is Alright and Hit After Hit. Submerge caught up with Smith for a bit of the old how’s-your-father in anticipation of their stop at Second Saturday’s THIS festival on July 13, 2013.
I read an interview you recently conducted with San Francisco psychic Jessica Lanyadoo. You spoke at length about her thoughts on death and the afterlife, which seemed fitting given much of the content on Antenna to the Afterworld.
I’ve always been interested in death, to be honest. My songs aren’t macabre or anything, but there are a lot of lyrics, in the past records too, that are about death. I’ve had a couple people die [in my life], and it wasn’t something that made me sad or depressed; it was something that made me curious.
A morbid curiosity?
I guess literally speaking it’s morbid curiosity. But not only the afterlife or the afterworld, but all those things we’ve thought about as humans but really don’t [understand]—dimensions, other universes, alien life; all that shit. And as far as my beliefs, I kind of believe in everything. Although I wouldn’t bat an eye if none of that existed either.
So is this psychic a close friend or just somebody you happened to chitchat with?
I was bought a present from my band to visit her. I had no idea she’s also a medium. So within the session she said that I had a visitor and would I like to talk to this visitor. She described this visitor, and it pretty much fit this woman I knew who had died—an older woman that I wasn’t incredibly tight with, but knew her as a fan.
The psychic said she had some things to impart…something along the lines of “don’t wallow in loneliness; live, because I didn’t.” She’d had a son that committed suicide at a young age, and she was very depressed for a couple years and then died in her sleep. If you’re a romantic, you might think she died of a broken heart. Now, I have no idea if that stuff is actually happening, and if a medium is actually contacting the dead. I don’t profess to know anything, but I left the meeting just being inspired to think about the afterlife and afterworld.
Can’t hurt for songwriting content.
It was just really impactful. It’s not like you walk home and go, “I’m gonna write a bunch of songs about this.” You’re just kind of excited and interested in something and then naturally six months later you realize it’s worked its way into what you’re working on. My fascination with the afterlife was just a natural tie-in to my fascination with sci-fi… It just all kind of fit and became this record. Even the title, I didn’t make that up. A friend of mine was laying down a guitar track and he wasn’t happy with it. He said something like, “I need another beer or two for my antennas to go into the afterworld.” And I [said], “Man that is so beautiful. Can I use that?”
One song on the new record that grabbed me lyrically is “Natural Acts,” in which you profess “I was a freak, I was a dog” in the “graveyard of my youth.” Who were you as a kid?
I don’t know who I was. I think there’s a part of me that feels like I was and always have been a bit of a misfit. I would stop short of saying outcast, but I was one of those kids that always had that feeling, you know? In high school I was one of those stoners who kind of hung on the fringe with two or three people and didn’t mix. And before that there was some sense that I wasn’t a joiner, even though I was on soccer teams and stuff. Growing up and being an artist, sometimes I’ve kind of felt within a room but alone. A lot of songs are about being a dog, or being from another planet, or being a freak.
What were you listening to back then?
Well that part of being a kid was incredible. I had these extreme phases that would last maybe eight months. If it was fourth or fifth grade me and my buddies all chose our own band. Matt Penwell had Ratt, and Shawn McGuire had Mötley Crüe, and I had Iron Maiden or something like that. We’d be so into it we’d write “Ozzy” on our fingers. And then a year later I’d be into Thompson Twins and all that new wave stuff; we had a very distinct year of Howard Jones and General Public and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. And then a year later that was over and I was on a breakdance team and had a breakdance name. We were listening to Nucleus and Daft Punk and Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” I was one of those kids that was moving through these identity phases all the time. I don’t do that anymore [with] my identity, but artistically it’s why I like to move through phases.
Longtime Companion, if you’re talking about phases for the Sunsets, is a good example. You were into country at the time. You did it, and now you’ve moved onto something else.
Exactly. I want to have a band where people are like, “Yeah, did you ever hear that third record they did, that country record? That’s a trip.”
How do you feel about the scene in San Francisco and how it compares to other spots around the country?
Um, overrated? I know there are a lot of creative people in San Francisco, but I don’t always know why one city gets shined a light on and others don’t. There’s been times when Austin is thought of to be this haven for this, or Detroit is this place for that, but I went to Melbourne and I saw all these bands that were slaying just as much as when I play in San Francisco, if not more. Or I end up on a bill randomly with some band from Cleveland and they’re incredible. San Francisco gets a lot of attention, but most of the bands in San Francisco live in Oakland. San Francisco is such a city of affluence and influence that it’s kind of just sucking up the people around it. There’s certainly great artists and bands in San Francisco because people go there and it’s kind of a snowball effect just like New York; but there are great artists in so many places, I always feel weird thinking that San Francisco deserves some sort of extra credit.
Sonny and the Sunsets will perform on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at THIS, a new Second Saturday summer series block party that goes down on 20th street between J and K Streets (outside the MARRS Building). The event is free, runs from 4 to 9 p.m. and all ages are welcome. Opening on July 13 will be Kisses, Extra Classic, Brown Shoe and DJ Roger Carpio.
