Interview in "The Leaflet"
Andrew Christman Exhibit: Recent Works
by Hideko Secrest, Leaflet Editor
The sudden appearance of the coronavirus pandemic cut short our last art exhibition before we could have the artist’s reception, but painter Andrew Christman went into the closed up Cope House galleries in early April and had photographers Kyle and Linette Kielinski of Kielinski Photographers take pictures of his work for a virtual exhibition which can still be seen here.
Having grown up in the Philadelphia area, first in West Philly, then on the Main Line, Christman left to attend art school in Brooklyn at the Pratt Institute, where he majored in painting and education. “For a while,” he says, “I was a pure abstract painter: totally non-figurative art.”
Later, he went to England to earn a master’s degree in East Asian Art History at the University of Manchester with the Sotheby’s program, specializing in ancient Buddhist portraiture. After he returned from England, he “started using field guides, zoological guides and bestiaries” as a basis for his paintings. “I’ve always been interested in history, music, and science, but always filtered through art.” Combining the scientific field guide illustrations with painting was a way to blend modalities: “Painting is kind of an outdated medium for art. I try to stay current by bringing in all kinds of influences into the painting.”
He remembers loving art from childhood, but claims he had no particular talent. “I have just always loved painting and drawing from my earliest memories…. I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it and eventually got better,” he laughed.
He got into the role of educator primarily through museums: his first teaching job was at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. At present, he is a teaching artist for the Philadelphia Museum of Art (though currently furloughed by the pandemic). The Museum “sent me out to do residencies through the Delphi Program”—these were primarily middle school programs, and some after-school programs. “The cool thing about the after-school program was that it was with the same students all year long, so you get to really know them.”
Christman also collaborates regularly with a local Germantown poet, Veronica Bowlan, making community-based art. Together, they founded Way of Words, in which they create “large-scale accordion-style books… [and] invite participants to write spontaneously, using poetry and collage.”
Some of Christman’s earlier shows featured titles like “Aviary,” “Arboretum,” and “Copse,” but he felt that “since this show was in an actual arboretum it seemed a bit redundant.” When pressed, he claims, “I like to be generic. I like to leave a lot to the imagination. I do a lot of untitled triptychs, so when I do a series of paintings… you see a connection. It allows the viewer to experience or create a story themselves.” This practice makes him feel part of the contemporary artistic tradition of keeping names of works free of connotations: “The generic titles also are a nod to titles used by abstract expressionist painters like DeKooning or Gorky.”
The paintings Christman created for this exhibition are actually multi-media works. He started with black-and-white digital photography printed on watercolor paper, then overlaid a wash of watercolor on top of those images, and then “overtop of that…acrylic, more watercolor, sumi-e ink and spray paint.” Sometimes he lays the paintings on the floor, sometimes sets them upright, allowing the paint to drip, all in the name of keeping the work spontaneous.
And why trees? “These are all trees that I have a close relationship to,” ones he encounters on his daily walks, in his neighborhood. “The whole idea of painting the same tree in different ways mirrors our experience of passing it every day” and experiencing it differently each time. He is hoping that this will be the first of many shows at arboretums.
