episode four | myles calvert

published 19 dec 2018

Miranda Metcalf  Hello printmaking friends and welcome to the fourth episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. I'm your host, Miranda Metcalf. I release an episode of Pine Copper Lime once every two weeks, and on the off weeks, I put up an article on the website that features images, and maybe a bit more information about the artist that I'm going to interview. You can also find Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) on Facebook, Instagram, of course, and as of this week, Twitter. And as soon as I figured out what Twitter is, how it works, and why there's such a lack of pictures, I'll start posting there, too. This week, I'm talking to Myles Calvert, and I have to say, you all are in for a real treat. He's an absolute delight, and a bona fide hoot. This is also probably the first week where I get into some real nice deep print nerd chat. So if anyone's been holding out for witty banter around chemistry or safety regulations, you're going to get a little bit of that in this episode. We're also going to talk about his practice as a traveling adjunct instructor, how he balances that with his passion for the craft of teaching, and we have some pretty nice Damien Hirst gossip in there as well. So I would definitely say stay tuned. And if you like what you hear, leave us a review on the iTunes Store. It's quick, it's free, and it's a great way to show your support for the podcast and say, Hey, I like that there's a podcast that talks about contemporary printmaking that no one else understands. And without further ado, here's Myles. Hi, Myles. How's it going?

Myles Calvert  It's going well, how are you? 

Miranda Metcalf  I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for joining me. 

Myles Calvert  Thank you for having me. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. How are things in Alfred?

Myles Calvert  Oh, not bad. Semester's going hard, going strong. Lots of students in the studio, keeping me on my toes. We have alumni weekend this weekend, so lots of parents hovering around the studios, football game.

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, man, that sounds very wholesome and Americana. 

Myles Calvert  American pie.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, that's great. Well, would you mind introducing yourself just a little bit and telling people where you are and what you do?

Myles Calvert  Sure. My name is Myles Calvert. I am currently a visiting professor in expanded media at Alfred University. And I'm also teaching at Alfred State College. My focus is on printmaking, but I dabble in other mediums as well.

Miranda Metcalf  Great. So you sort of touched on that for a second, the expanded media at Alfred. But maybe you could talk a little bit about what you do at Alfred and sort of how Alfred's print department is pretty unique and goes at things with maybe a different angle than other print departments at other universities.

Myles Calvert  Absolutely. So it's a bit more than a traditional printmaking facility. Like they do have stone lithography and etching presses and nitric acid, however, the expanded media portion also includes lots of technology. So we've got 3D printers, we have laser engravers, a platemaker for photo etching, as well. And a fabric printer. So the surface is no longer just paper, we go into anything flat and different materials constantly.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. So how did you come to printmaking and have that be a part of your art practice?

Myles Calvert  I had a great experience. I went to the University of Guelph in Ontario. It's about 45 minutes west of Toronto. I just started going there because the campus had a great vibe. Every year it got better and better. I took 2D, 3D, and then just kind of focused more on the 2D, got hooked with a great print professor, Jean Maddison. She's British, currently working out of the... Where is she now? She's in Vancouver, I believe, maybe coming back to Ontario soon, hopefully. She taught me pretty much everything I know. The facilities there were fantastic. Technicians as well. I think it's the relationships that I made there. And students and faculty members that kept me on the printmaking train.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, absolutely. Having that one influential professor can certainly completely change the course of a person's life for sure. 

Myles Calvert  Well, [Maddison] had this, this way of speaking which was very direct and honest. Which, when you only have a few years to pick up what you need to pick up for a skill, that's what you need. 

Miranda Metcalf  Do you attempt to emulate that in your own teaching practice? 

Myles Calvert  I try my best. I think I'm a little more soft than she was.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Well, you're not a British woman, which I feel like, I feel like it's easier to take bad news from that accent.

Myles Calvert  Well, you know, give me time, you never know what can happen. The feedback I try to give is usually direct. It can be a little fluffy, maybe in the sophomore years, but as you go on, you want to get it hard. You want to get the answer quickly. And you want to move on to improve on what you're working on.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that certainly was a watershed moment for me in my schooling, was when you make that shift between dreading feedback and loving it, you know, just like, tell me what I'm doing wrong, please. Because that's how you get better.

Myles Calvert  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And if you don't get it from your peers, something's not happening. You should get it from both sides, your peers and from your faculty members.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, certainly. Do you think that it's possible to cultivate that while teaching in an art setting, to encourage the peers to give that honest feedback, but without sort of coming from a place of ego?

Myles Calvert  Oh, absolutely. You're going to learn better from the people who you're constantly surrounding yourself with for your time. And that's just not in academia, it's outside as well, as a practicing artist. If you don't surround yourself by people who are also working in pushing themselves and working hard and achieving, you're not going to do the same yourself. So the first thing I do with my students is get them to talk directly to one student at a time in the critique. So you're getting, you know, 15 voices, all at the same time, speaking about one person's work, and then we switch it up as we go, different ways of critiquing. But if you're hearing from someone, generally your age, in your program, learning at the exact same time that you are, you're going to listen more than that older person who's telling you what to do.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, definitely. So you talked a little bit about the variety of resources that are available at Alfred, and how it's really that mix of new technology and old technology. But I feel like that also shows up in your work as well. And I'd love to hear you tell me a little bit about how you sort of see those interacting and how that fits into your practice as a whole.

Myles Calvert  That's a tricky one. So the role of the traveling visiting adjunct sessional professor, that I use facilities that are at my disposal, so I might be here for the next year, and to have these phenomenal facilities, but I'm going to use what I might not have if I go back to working at OCAD in downtown Toronto, or the University of Guelph, where they have maybe a different chemistry. So my work completely evolves, depending on what I have access to. And I think that would go for any person who needs a different type of studio access. My work, I love looking at the past and kind of bringing technology into it to make it into a contemporary print, and not just a contemporary image. So if you wanted an example, I'm staring right now at a stack of love seats, which is a screenprint. And it's using a photographic process, which is not necessarily new and contemporary. That's been along, you know, since the 40s and 50s, actually, but adding things to my ink, changing the colors with pigments that didn't exist back then, it's just kind of taking what it is and pushing it a bit further to give it a different spin.

Miranda Metcalf  And so having to adapt your practice, or maybe even rephrasing it to say, getting to adapt your practice... do you see that as, I mean, I guess it must keep you really nimble as an artist and and really fight complacency quite fiercely.

Myles Calvert  Well, it keeps me on my toes because I'll get thrown into different situations where it's always a new studio. And each studio is completely different of how they look after their health and safety, which pigments they're using, what students are allowed to use what, and I've had the best results when I've done a residency, for example, I went to Arquetopia in Mexico, Puebla, and it was - the whole assignment that I had planned for my time there, a whole month, completely changed when I arrived. So it's having that flexibility of having to strip back to the bare bones and reimagine your projects. It's very stressful for about 20 seconds, and then completely freeing for the rest of the time.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I can imagine. And did you just, you just came back from a residency in Spain? Is that correct as well?

Myles Calvert  I did, Art Print Residence. Yeah, about 45 minutes up the coast from Barcelona, spent a fantastic month there just working on large scale copper plates - ferric chloride, so something I didn't have access to, and still don't - we use nitric, currently where I'm working. So a different material, but I went with a focus of wanting to use that scale and that chemistry.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I guess that's the life of the traveling artist/teacher, which can be, as we all know, pretty unstable. But it also does offer incredible opportunities when you do have the luxury of just going to a print residency for a month.

Myles Calvert  [Yeah, we just get to pack our] life into, you know, a bag and a half or two bags and disappear for the summer. It's fantastic. Not just as an artist, but as a human, you get to go and explore different parts of the world. And you get to make work. Because it's, you know, the same old story when you're teaching, you don't get a lot of work done during the semester. But that's just life, and I wouldn't change it for anything at the moment.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Now, did you get to stay on in Spain and do Impact? I don't think I saw you there.

Myles Calvert  I didn't, but lots of people who I miss and love completely did. But I did bounce to the UK and did some teaching there. At the old - I used to work at Sussex Coast College in Hastings, in East Sussex. And I go back as much as I can, but definitely once every July, and do a week or two of teaching for them. So a week of etching and a week of screenprint. And then I bounced over to France. And that was pure pleasure. But looking at different galleries, and spending five days in London and seeing Ed Ruscha and going to my favorite, the Portrait Gallery, and buying some natural pigments at all my secret little haunts that I used to love so much when I lived there. It's just a fantastic opportunity, very lucky to be able to do things like that.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I think that's a good way to get into one of the questions I had for you, which was specifically about how the time that you spent in the UK has affected your practice because there's an undercurrent of Britishness in what you do, for lack of a better way of putting it, which is really charming. And I think maybe particularly interesting to me, as an American, and you as a Canadian, you know, we both have that sort of - 

Myles Calvert  It's the motherland. 

Miranda Metcalf  It's the motherland. Exactly. You know, we as Americans may have rebelled a little bit more strongly in our teenage years. But, you know,  it's still the motherland, as you say, and I think something that we, in one way or another, maybe, particularly in kind of academic settings, look to as an ideal of some kind. So, yeah, I love that about your work. And I just love to hear that story.

Myles Calvert  You're going to find it funny, because the more I talk about the UK, in London in my time there, I switch into like an accent. Just, and then I mean, I'm gonna become that British woman that we spoke about before. 

Miranda Metcalf  You should try that for your critiques. 

Myles Calvert  I did a semester abroad in my third year, through the University of Guelph, to London. And I took as little coursework as I possibly could to give myself more of an opportunity to bounce around the city and to jump to mainland Europe. It was so worth it. Every weekend was somewhere new, every day popping up at a different tube location, a different gallery, a different bar, a different part of the city. I came back completely malnourished and dyed my hair black and looked so sickly just in time for Christmas to get plumped up again. But that experience, with that culture and weather, it did something for me. So I applied for my master's degree at Camberwell College of Art, part of University for the Arts in London. Their big claim to fame is Central Saint Martin's and Chelsea. It's five colleges that came together to make a university, basically. My time there was good, like the masters kept me fairly busy. I met lots of fantastic artists in lots of different disciplines. I volunteered at a print studio, Thumbprint Editions, and they did editions for Anish Kapoor, Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst, all the big kind of contemporary - Tracy Emin, and on and on and on. That was an interesting experience. Learning how, in the middle of a filthy busy studio, you can still make immaculate prints. So that's what I picked up from them. That kept me kind of in the contemporary print world in a way, because of all of the galleries that are just there. They don't exist in other places. Maybe in New York City, maybe Berlin. But London is definitely a hub. And print is appreciated there. So I was there for roughly five years. And just in the thick of it. Worked at Selfridges, did high end retail. Celebrities came through all the time, it was... I tried to dive into the life. So, switched to tea... you know, stereotypical things. And I think what kept it interesting for me is the fact that every day I had to take a bendy bus to get into the center of London. I worked at the National Portrait Gallery for three and a half-ish years, where I saw the runnings of one of my favorite galleries. It was just from the inside out. And it's still one of my favorite galleries today. Even, you know, sometimes you work places and you don't see it the same as you once did. But I go back every time with a huge smile on my face. But the history is there from Tudor portraits all the way up to a commission from Alex Katz from last week. So that kept me loving the area. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And you touched on it a little bit, but I'd love to maybe explore where prints fit into British culture, you said they may have been taken a little bit more seriously than we're used to in North America. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Myles Calvert  If I was to have a fairly educated guess about it, it would be a connection to the old world, Germany, industrial revolution, having access to facilities, but having presses and using them, like fully using them, pushing their potential. And having them for so long that it's just sitting there, they're gonna keep using it. So they're not looking for the newest thing all the time. I remember watching a documentary with Attenborough, whose studio is in Bermondsey, which was two blocks around the corner from where I was living. And you wouldn't even know it. You have artists there who are huge in the art world who live around the corner and they don't get bothered. ...Just around the corner, they're making a phenomenal etching.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I feel like that's, that you've touched on a few things in there that are part of those big cultural differences between America and Britain, you know, that searching for what's new, or thinking that something can't be good unless it has an air of being novel about it. You know, they don't, maybe they don't have that because they've got a history and a sense of culture that so strong, they don't need to push to be new for the sake of being new.

Myles Calvert  I think there's respect as well for old processes and understanding how they were made. So that's why car boot sales, as they'll call it, or yard sales, jumble sales, are still very popular. And it's a big event. 

Miranda Metcalf  That sounds really fun. 

Myles Calvert  Another kind of connection would be, I moved down to Hastings eventually when I started teaching more at the college down there. But they also opened up a brand new gallery called the Jerwood Gallery, which is part of a huge foundation. And I was exposed every day to contemporary and modern British art. So that really ingrained kind of the history of British art in particular, in the global scene.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, and then I feel like the artifacts of your time in the UK show up in your work in actual objects. Would you say that that's accurate?

Myles Calvert  Definitely through color and through pattern. I think you're hinting toward the toaster shape.

Miranda Metcalf  I'm just skirting this whole toaster thing. But then, I'm trying to casually segue into really just talking about the content of your work and that you've got these everyday objects of comfort. And our relationships to them as well as popular culture and all of that, that's all there in your work. And I'd love to hear you talk about the actual objects, those sort of domestic objects that show up.

Myles Calvert  It began with having lots of frustrations while doing my master's degree. And just wanting to use the medium of screenprint and mass production, and referencing the history of why that process was even invented. And not wanting to spend a ton of money, and making it super official on paper. I wanted something disposable and quick, and I wanted to get that stage of life over with. So I printed on loaves of bread, which, like sliced pieces of bread, which were then toasted and installed. I did Damien Hirst's face first, kind of poking fun of the art world and celebrity, and seeing religion in images like the Virgin Mary on toast, etc. So I threw him in there, the big art star that he was, is, because it's ridiculous. And then I put my face on there, even more ridiculous. And I remember applying for a job at his store, Other Criteria, which sells multiples by artists who he invites to partake, and I couriered it with a, like a guy on a motorcycle, and put all of my face and his face on toast in a big box with my resume on the top and an application for the job, and the courier got there. And they phoned me and they're like, 'The store's closed today. What do you want me to?' I was not pleased. So I said, 'Is there a mailbox?' And he said, 'Yes.' And he opened the box, and he put every little individual piece of toast through the mailbox for me. And then he threw the resume on top. And then about maybe two weeks afterwards, I got this email saying, 'Would you like to come and retrieve your toast, and you did not get the job.' Whatever, you had to try, right? 

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I love it! I love it.

Myles Calvert  But it's the object of bread and toast, that led to toaster, it's kind of a natural progression. And it's not necessarily the fact that it's a toaster. It's the fact that it's something that is recognizable by whoever sees it from wherever. And the purpose and design of it has not greatly changed over the however many years that it's been made. So it's, I find that interesting. And that's when color comes in. So I'll have the exact same object. And I'll print it multiple times using different mediums. And I'll change the color. And I'm hoping that the color will change an individual's perspective and time period when they look at it based on their history and their memories. That's what is kind of the core interest to me at the moment.

Miranda Metcalf  So sort of like a Madeline of visual arts, then.

Myles Calvert  Hmm. Maybe. Maybe, let me think that one through. Maybe. It's, I'm constantly working through it. And I remember giving my first little talk at Alfred University and being asked a similar question, the "why" question, which is the one that everyone dreads, but I ask it all the time of my students. And my answer was, I'm not entirely sure yet, which is why I'm still looking and pushing for answers and researching. But it's color theory. It's romanticism. It's the individual feelings that people get, which are always different, you're never going to have the exact same feeling as someone else.

Miranda Metcalf  Everyone, as you say, definitely does have that personal connection to color and experience. And so I really like that idea of taking these objects of comfort and home, you know - and I assume that ottomans fit into this as well, but we can we can talk about those separately if need be - and then having the color be really what personalizes it for people, and really playing in that experience of each individual person having an individual [feeling].

Myles Calvert  Absolutely. What's your favorite color?

Miranda Metcalf  Oh, I... this is gonna sound so dramatic, but I really love black. 

Myles Calvert  I knew it was gonna be - I just knew it. 

Miranda Metcalf  I know!

Myles Calvert  Such a gallerist’s response.

Miranda Metcalf  I know! I try to tell people that it's really, I may sometimes seem like a fancy gallerist, but I promise I'm just a fat goth. Like, my true form underneath is I've got my eyes just like outlined in raccoon eyes. And I've got, you know, fish nets and just a giant septum piercing and it's... yeah. But, you know, I learned that I have to function in society, so. We all wear our masks.

Myles Calvert  This is true. I love a little good quote from The Mask as well. Little Jim Carrey reference. I'm wearing all black right now. And that's nothing new. But it's also a practical reason, because when I'm in the studio, I get absolutely covered in dust from woodblocks and ink from an inky table and oil.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, yeah. And I think that with the, you know, typical sort of gallerist wearing black, part of it is, of course, that you don't want to distract from the art. There's a practical reason. When you're standing next to a painting talking about it, you don't want the fact that you're wearing a yellow dress and the painting has yellow to distract from the visual experience. But I think it's also the practical because, as you well know, being someone working in the arts, it is not a glamorous job, being a gallerist. Like, there is a lot of dusting and lifting and straightening and crawling underneath things that you have to do.

Myles Calvert  And that's just the physical part. There's the whole mental part, which I know is absolutely exhausting.

Miranda Metcalf  But I think working in prints and having a price point that started at $150, and obviously, you know, we did have five figure pieces, we did sell Eschers and that kind of thing. But a lot of what we did was under $1000. And that really allowed us, I think, to deal with people who are not necessarily elite to the point that they're expecting very special treatment. And that was easier. I don't - I think it would be difficult for me, at this point, to go to a very high end gallery from that.

Myles Calvert  I went to a gallery in London this summer, and I knew they were having an open house/tour/talk about the drawings and prints in the collection. And I'm like, perfect, I have a few hours to spare. Let's go check this out. And they had sales there, really low pressure sales. You know, take your time, ask us any questions, the way it should be. And I walked out with something and I was quite happy.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I think that there's a kind of an honestness in prints that I really love about that. Is that it's more accepted to just say, 'Do you like this? Can you afford it? Go home with it.' And it really just being that kind of pure... and you'd get into less conversations about, 'What is this going to be worth in 20 years? What is this going to be worth in 40 years? Tell me about...where is this artist showing, what collections are they in?' Which is all significant in art collecting, but it is removed from just that personal experience, one on one, person and object. It's removed from that kind of honesty, I think.

Myles Calvert  It's a great conversation, and I don't think it happens the same with painting. Or sculpture, for that matter.

Miranda Metcalf  And I love that about printmaking. And the other side of that coin, of course, is that we do end up having that devaluing of prints and prints being separated. And, you know, we have our own fairs and our own conferences, and there are galleries that just don't deal in prints. And there are museums that just don't collect prints, but kind of being a bit removed from all that art world bullshit also does afford us a great honesty, which, I love it. I love being in this medium. I don't think I'd have it any other way. 

Myles Calvert  I'm so happy you said that. 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that's why I had the gall to believe that you know, a whole podcast, dedicated contemporary printmaking, that'll take off.

Myles Calvert  So do it. It's, I have these conversations with my students all the time, and it's usually on a one to one basis, which is quite funny because then I end up having it multiple times. But they hit a point in their education where they kind of get what print is all about. And it's like a little "Aha", light-comes-on moment. And they talk to me like it's new to me! And I love it. So I love hearing their explanations of how they explained a print and a process to a family member over a holiday, or how they really liked the bevel of the paper, or the tooth of it and how long they had to soak it for and what it did and the quality and the result. Then they get hooked. And that is the best possible moment. And it's so exciting.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I wonder if, when we really finish doing all the genetic science on people, we'll find the printmaking gene, because it's like some people have it, and some people don't. And when you see it kind of light up in them, or I would have that moment at the gallery talking to people, because people would come in not having any idea what they were looking at. You know, they'd be like, what are these, charcoals? Where are these, photographs? And when you'd explain to them, some people would just never lose that kind of blank expression. And some people, they just, that light in their eyes would go on. And it was magical, when people came to understand it.

Myles Calvert  But also the difference between a print-based artist and a printmaker. So maybe we need to kind of look at those terms, because I love working in print. That's clearly my focus. However, do I want to sit there and whip out an edition of 50? No, I do not. Do I want something to assist me doing that because I'm too OCD, I'll just bounce off and look at something else and want to do something different, change the colors... I do need a printmaker, plate maker, what have you, there to keep me on track.

Miranda Metcalf  Master printer.

Myles Calvert  Yeah! A master printer to do it. Like, fine, if I have to? I will. But I'm hoping to afford the luxury of the assistance one day.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. Well, I know that Tim [Pauszek] had a great time producing with you. 

Myles Calvert  It was great.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah. And I think that in that kind of community centered printmaking, or community centered art making, which is what printmaking is, you really see people sort of falling into their role. And when everything lines up, it's magic.

Myles Calvert  Well, throughout the whole printing process, and this was definitely noted and we laughed quite a few times as well printing editions together, each person, each printer, goes up and down like you do in a day. Like you're you're happy, you're positive, and then you kind of slump down, and then you're up again, you start really caring about something, perfect registration and counting... everything. And then you slump down to oh, it's good enough. But usually when you're paired with a printer, you rotate those schedules. And I think we noticed that when we printed for each other, that, for example, if Tim thought it was good enough, I'm like, 'It is not good enough! We need to do this and fix this,' and he'd do the exact same to me. And that's why you need to print with people. It improves your work! 

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, you get the feedback, the live feedback, it's really significant. 

Myles Calvert  Yeah, or else you're just gonna regret it down the road. 

Miranda Metcalf  I love it. So I think this would be a good place to sort of wrap things up. But I'd love to hear you talk just quickly about how celebrity shows up in your work.

Myles Calvert  Yeah, that's one that was big during the London years. Absolutely. And is still a little bit now. It was a whole part of having a recognizable face of power, but power that you might not necessarily be aware of. So I would do, with someone like Nigella Lawson, who may not be as well known in North America, but in the art world, her husband at the time was Charles Saatchi of the Saatchi gallery, who bought up all of the artwork of the YBAs, the Damien Hirsts and the Gary Humes, etc. And he was caught in this paparazzi photograph of putting his hands around her neck. What was happening, I don't know. They were in a public place. But having someone like her, I put her on a piece of bread and then I pinched the bread together. And no one would really get that reference unless you were kind of in that circle, in that world. But it was connected again to - she has a cookbook out, she's known for being very sultry, and kind of sexy in the kitchen. So it ties it back to the blenders and the toasters and the mixers and the expensive showroom quality kitchens that I'm still very interested in. I don't use them myself, but I like looking at other people's and how they display their appliances, like artwork in a showroom. What's brought into play with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver and their faces on wooden spoons, and again, the repetition of image, but using technology, lasers, to put their images onto the spoons and having them up like toy soldiers. And there's this kind of immaturity to it, but at the same time, it just keeps me on my toes a little bit, because I'm like, what the heck am I so obsessed with, with these? And I'm still trying to figure it out. But it's going somewhere. And it's definitely changing into areas like other objects from the household, which have repeat patterns, such as those ottomans that we were talking about before. Ottoman, footstool, whatever you call it, but it's it's the patterns on them and the colors that are of interest at the moment.

Miranda Metcalf  Well, thank you so much for chatting with me and being so open about your history and your practice. And, yeah, we'll be in touch. 

Myles Calvert  Sounds great. Thank you so much. Speak soon. 

Miranda Metcalf  Thanks. So if anyone's listened to the first three episodes, you might have noticed that I forgot to ask Myles where we can find out more about him. You can catch Myles on his website, which is squirrelpigeonfish.com, just like the animals, and on Instagram @squirrelpigeonfish. I'll put a link in the show notes for all of those. This episode was written and produced by me, Miranda Metcalf, with editing by Timothy Pauszek and music by Joshua Webber. I'll see you guys in two weeks.