National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Portrait of an Artist: Bo Gehring

This is the eleventh in a series of interviews with artists participating in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The third OBPC exhibition opened on March 23, 2013, and will run through February 23, 2014. It features the works of forty-eight artists in many forms of media.

Bo Gehring, who participated in our interviews last autumn, was named first prize winner of the third Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

Still from Jessica Wickham by Bo Gehring / HD video (5:05 minutes), 2010 / Collection of the artist

Q: What is your name, where are you from, where do you live now?

A: Bo Gehring, Beacon, New York

Q: What medium(s) do you work with?

A: Currently video, 3-D computer animation, and 3-D audio. In the past I’ve worked in cast bronze, cast stainless steel, cast aluminum, machined foam, and machined industrial felt.

Most of my projects are computer-related (I have a long background in 3-D animation and design) and sometimes involve programs that I write in C language to, for example, transform music into 3-D surfaces or drive an artistic process with stochastic data.

Q: Tell us about your technique/creative process.

A: It varies. But as an example, I have a really big milling machine that I originally acquired to make casting patterns for the front of a building at 40 Bond Street in Lower Manhattan. Although I’m not especially musical, I do love music and am deeply affected by it emotionally. When the 40 Bond Street project was done, I had the idea to use the milling machine to create a body of carved and painted foam surfaces derived from music.

Did that for a couple of years—what to do next? One day I was looking at that wonderful tool sitting idle and realized it would make a precision camera platform like no other. The idea of close-up motion portraits came right to mind. And so why not try to capture some of the emotion when someone hears favorite music? Bought a video camera. Now, three years later, I have a growing body of work around this concept, which never would have occurred without a lot of happenstance.

What is your background (education, career, etc.) and how does it contribute to your art?

I had a good start in college but became disenchanted with engineering and dropped out to become an artist. In spite of believing I would never willingly do anything like engineering again, events quickly conspired to put me into very high-tech computer pursuits for the next thirty-five years. I was an early computer animator and also earned two patents developing three-dimensional sound.

This background informs every art project I do; in fact I think of each of my artworks as a direct outgrowth, or flowering if you like, of the skills I learned during all those years in technology.

Q: How did you learn about the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition?

A: From an artist friend, Mariella Bisson.

Q: Tell us about the piece you submitted to the competition.

A: At lunch in a deli I ran into Jessica Wickham, a precision woodworker in Beacon, also on lunch break and in her shop clothes. Would she like to do a portrait right after lunch? Okay. I happened to have a CD of Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten,” her favorite and coincidentally one of mine, too.

On first viewing, the portrait was obviously something special. The way Jessica makes eye contact and then slides back into the music was extraordinary. And I really liked the Crocs shoes and work clothes. That is why I submitted this particular portrait. I’ve seen it a hundred times and still tear up when it plays.

Q: Tell us about your larger body of work.

A: I don’t have any special desire to build a huge body of work, although that seems to be happening anyway. It’s important to me that each effort covers new ground: I’m basically an inventor, and I like work that exercises the things I know how to do at full bandwidth.

So far, in addition to these videos I’ve worked in just about every discipline involving metal and computers, computer-machined foam and industrial felt, and computer animation. Moving into video and maybe eventually 3-D sound is a logical extension.

Q: What are you currently working on?

A: I built a portable rig, which is as good as the huge milling machine for taking portraits, and hope to use that to collect portraits in the field like the early portrait photographers.

Q: Has your work changed over time?

A: Yes. I seem to move from discipline to discipline with no predictable trajectory. Actually I live for the variety.

Q: Tell us about a seminal experience you’ve had has an artist.

A: Loving music and realizing I could use it to make time-based art.

Q: Who is your favorite artist?

A: Brancusi.

Q: If you could work with any artist (past or present) who would it be?

A: Leonardo.

Q: What is your favorite artwork?

A: Don’t know how to answer. So many. But I do love the whimsy and non-mechanicalness of Calder’s moving sculptures.

Q: What inspires you?

A: I’m an optimistic sap at heart so . . . anything. But family and friends in particular.

Jessica Wickham by Bo Gehring / HD video (5:05 minutes), 2010 / Collection of the artist

NPG Pop Quiz Trivia Night: Ladies First

March is Women’s History Month, and the National Portrait Gallery is excited to host a special event celebrating the contributions of the famous, fearless, and fabulous ladies in our collection. Join us in the Kogod Courtyard on Thursday, March 28, at 6:30 p.m. for NPG Pop Quiz, a collections-inspired trivia game.

This month’s theme, “Ladies First,” will highlight the groundbreaking women who made strides as the “first” in their field and had a major impact on history and culture. For example, did you know that Amelia Earhart once wrote an aviation column for Cosmopolitan magazine? Or that when young architect Maya Lin submitted her winning design for the Vietnam memorial, she beat out hundreds of other applicants, including one of her professors at Yale (who gave her a B in his course!)?

Here is a sneak peek at the 10-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz trivia:

First Lady Martha Washington married George Washington in 1759, pulling him upward in Virginia’s social and economic strata. Martha was viewed by contemporaries as a quiet, reserved woman capable of managing an estate. She contributed to her husband’s climb to national leadership in numerous ways. During the Revolutionary War, Martha even stayed with her husband in the army’s winter encampment.

What was Martha’s title while her husband was president?

A. Lady Martha
B. Mrs. President
C. Lady Washington
D. Mrs. Presidentress

The Courtyard Café will be open, and snacks and beverages will be available for purchase.

Pop Quiz trivia occurs once a month in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington / Unidentified artist / Oil on canvas, c.1800–25 / National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution

Amelia Earhart returns to America / Unidentified photographer for Acme Newspictures, Inc / Gelatin silver print, 1932 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Opens!

The third Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is on the walls.  Like the previous iterations of the competition, this installment features many compelling, diverse works which represent the breadth of American portraiture.  The winner of the competition’s first prize was Bo Gehring, whose video portrait is the first work in that medium ever to be selected as competition winner.

Still from Jessica Wickham by Bo Gehring

Gehring’s work is a slowly moving, vertical, digital portrait, bottom to top, of his sitter, Jessica Wickham.  It is not a tilt, as the camera is not stationary; it is more akin to a video scan.  Gehring’s camera moves from below the feet of his subject to beyond the top of her head, equidistant from her body during the entire, seemingly ascendant—seemingly because the subject is laying down—process of the shot.        

Dorothy Moss, curator of the competition, said of the work, “Bo Gehring’s portrait of Jessica Wickham was selected unanimously by the jury as the first prize winner. It was exciting to see a panel of informed, opinionated people come together in complete agreement. We were all especially struck by the poignancy of the moment when Wickham self-consciously looks away from the camera revealing the intimate dynamic between artist and subject and implicating us (the viewers) in the process.” For his winning portrait, Gehring will receive a $25,000 prize and a separate commission from the museum to portray a remarkable living American for its permanent collection.

In an earlier interview with NPG, Gehring noted, “I had a good start in college but became disenchanted with engineering and dropped out to become an artist. In spite of believing I would never willingly do anything like engineering again, events quickly conspired to put me into very high-tech computer pursuits for the next thirty-five years. I was an early computer animator and also earned two patents developing three-dimensional sound. This background informs every art project I do; in fact, I think of each one of my artworks as a direct outgrowth, or flowering if you like, of the skills I learned in all those years in technology.”

The range of the works submitted was great.  Inside the field of forty-eight portraits, many are traditional forms such as oil on canvas and sculpture, while others are photographs, textiles, and collage.  There are also four video portraits, one of which is projected onto a glitter screen.  The sitters also encompass a broad range of individuals, including relatives of the artists—moms, dads, and cousins—and friends of the artists.  There are also self-portraits, portraits of homeless individuals, soldiers, and strangers.

Still from Buffalo Milk Yogurt by Jennifer Levonian

Second prize was awarded to Jennifer Levonian of Philadelphia, who submitted a digital video animation titled Buffalo Milk Yogurt. Third prize went to Sequoyah Aono of New York. His self-portrait sculpture was created with acrylic on wood.

Commended artists are Paul D’Amato of Riverside, Illinois for his photograph Lillian, New Covenant Church of Deliverance, Chicago, 2011; Martha Mayer Erlebacher, from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania for her pencil-on-paper self-portrait; Heidi Fancher, from Washington, D.C., for her C-print photograph titled For Delia; and Beverly McIver of Durham, North Carolina for her oil-on-canvas work titled, Depression. Each will also be awarded a cash prize.

“The overall quality of this competition’s entries was incredibly strong across media. A theme that runs through the work in the exhibition is perseverance and the human capacity for resilience,” said Moss, adding, “The artists, whether making self-portraits, individual portrayals, or exploring the dynamic between family members in group portraits, are working through uncertainty and finding resolution while mastering their chosen medium.”

 The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Mobile App

Learn more about the portrait competition with our free mobile app! Tour the exhibition, listen to interviews, get inside information, and vote your favorite portrait for the People’s Choice Award.

The Death of the Gallant Pelham

March 17 marks 150 years since the death of Confederate artillery officer John Pelham at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia. 

Young men from both sides of the conflict hurried toward the war, that they might fight and achieve the glory they had sought so desperately since they first read Ivanhoe, perhaps, or Morte d’Arthur.  Some left farms, some left shops in the city, many left wives and children, and a few left school, in an age when eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year old men were more likely to be employed than still about their studies.

The class of 1861, West Point, was a different case altogether.  Some were sons of the Confederacy, others sons of the Union, but they all wanted to enter the fray and make their mark immediately.  The choice to leave or to finish their studies at the United States Military Academy was not an easy one.  The West Point education—an automatic ticket to the upper echelon of American military leadership— was not an opportunity to forego lightly.

John Pelham of Alabama was one of the young men forced to make such a difficult choice.  Pelham was to graduate West Point with the class of 1861 when the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter.  Among Pelham’s classmates was George Armstrong Custer, a brave if not excessively vain young fighter who would rise through the ranks quickly, only to be outmatched and cut down at Little Big Horn.  Of those in that class of 1861, Custer did not have a monopoly on bravery and flair.  John Pelham was certainly Custer’s equal, if not in many ways his better.

Pelham had been one of the wonder cadets at West Point, excelling in many areas of study.  He also brought with him no small amount of charm.  In his history of that famous academy class, Sacred Ties, From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War, Tom Carhart notes, he was “an excellent horseman… and was quite the dancer.”    

Leaving the military academy without waiting for graduation, Pelham joined the rebel army; his service was duly noted, especially his performance at the battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862.  Fighting an overwhelming number of oncoming federal forces, Pelham, himself, with the aid of his few surviving artillery men, successfully held the ground and stalled a Union incursion.  At the site of the battle, Robert E. Lee stated, “It is glorious to see such courage in one so young.”

Fredericksburg was a great victory for Lee; it was the first of two of Lee’s successive strikes against the greater Union army.  The fight at Chancellorsville, in late April and early May of 1863, would be Lee’s second successful initiative against Union opposition during this phase of the war.  In the larger battle at Chancellorsville, Lee would lose one of his key advisors and strategists, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.  Before that battle, in a bit of a less tempestuous fray at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia, on March 17, Lee would also lose one of his significant operatives.

Carhart describes the scene of John Pelham’s final fight:

When Pelham arrived on the scene of the battle, his artillery had not yet come up, though he had sent for it.  The most commonly told story of what followed has the 3^rd Virginia forming up for attack, and Pelham staying by them or riding with them, standing up in his stirrups, waving his hat or his sword and cheering them on:  “Forward! Forward!” But soon after those words left his lips, a Yankee shell exploded above and behind him, and a piece of shrapnel, later said to be the size of the end of one’s finger, pierced the back of his head at the hairline.  The charge by the 3^rd went on as Pelham fell from his horse.

The gallant Pelham never knew and never awakened.  He would be mourned by thousands as he lay in state in Richmond, and from there he would be taken home to Alabama where he would be buried in his home town of Jacksonville.  Young girls from Virginia and Alabama would weep at the loss of this brave and handsome southern officer, while the Confederate leadership would view this loss as a significant one.  Major John Pelham’s star had burned brightly, but briefly for his cause.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

John Pelham / Mathew B. Brady / Half-plate ambrotype, 1858 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Carhart, Tom.  Sacred Ties, From West Point Brothers to Battlefield Rivals: A True Story of the Civil War.  New York: Berkley Caliber (a division of Penguin Books), 2010.

NPG Welcomes Milissa Ferrari to the Museum Store

This is the latest installment in our series of mini-portraits of NPG staffers and interns. We recently spoke with Milissa Ferrari, manager of the recently renovated museum store at the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum in the Donald W. Reynolds Center.

Q: Please tell us about your career and education.

A: I have a BA in art history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a student I ran the art galleries for the student unions at the university. After graduating, I helped to open the Madison Civic Center— which housed two theaters and the Madison Art Center—working as the outreach and volunteer coordinator as well as house manager. I moved on to the Dallas Opera in Texas, where I worked in the marketing department, then on to become director of the Learning Annex (a national adult education program) in Chicago.

After taking a brief time off to have my two children, I began a new career in retail with Williams-Sonoma while still working on various art education programs through various school districts and serving on local arts councils. I was able to combine both my arts and retail experience in my next job as the store manager for the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. After three years in Portland, I am now here as the store director for the two gift shops located in the building for the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, as well as the Renwick Gallery.

Q: What is your vision for the museums’ store?

A: My vision for this store is that it becomes a destination shopping spot for the neighborhood and a wonderful surprise for all visitors. My hope is that it will appeal to the more serious art lover through our collection of art related books and monographs and yet also to the novice, with products inspired by works from the collection and the other beautiful, whimsical, and wonderful things we offer in the shop.

Q: Do you have some favorite works in the collections?

A: I have very diverse taste in art. My new favorite works from the collection include the beautiful watercolors by Till Freiwald, I am always drawn in by them. I also love William H. Johnson's work and George Nakashima's beautiful wood pieces. Also, I really like the portrait of Pocahontas.

Q: How do you like Washington, DC?

A: I’m very lucky to have lived a rather nomadic life. I have lived in many big cities. Washington is a wonderful and sunny change from my last three years in Portland. I am living very close to the two museums and love that I have so many wonderful things to do and see all within walking distance. I don't have a car and am so pleased to be able to hop on the Metro or even the Circulator to get around town.

I am very happy with my move here and have already reached a comfort level that usually takes a bit longer than the two months I've been here so far.

Q: Can you tell us about some of your hobbies or interests?

I am a big foodie, for one thing. I have been eating my way around town, always looking for good food wherever it might be found. My second passion is music. I love to hear live performances in small settings. I haven't really found any place for that yet but I'm open to suggestions.

I am an adventurer, so if anyone has thoughts on a neighborhood I should be walking around, a market I should go to, please stop in the shop and give me your suggestions. Guidebooks are ok for the casual tourist but I would rather have the inside scoop from those who know.

Portrait of an Artist: Jason Hanasik

This is the tenth in a series of interviews with artists participating in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The third OBPC exhibition opens on March 23, 2013, and will run through February 23, 2014. It will feature the works of forty-eight artists in many forms of media.

Sharrod with the toy gun his grandfather gave him / Jason Hanasik / Digital C-Print. 2010 / 20x24 inches

Q: What is your name, where are you from, where do you live now? 

A: My name is Jason Hanasik. I am from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and I currently live in San Francisco, California. 

Q: What medium(s) do you work with?

A: I mainly work with photography, video, and installation. 

Q: What is your background (education, career, etc.), and how does it contribute to your art?

A: I have an MFA in visual arts from California College of the Arts and a BFA summa cum laude from the State University of New York at Purchase. I have served as an adviser in the graduate program at California College of the Arts and am currently the senior manager of Digital Brand Communications in the Marketing Department at Gap–North America.

I include my day job since the role was created for me after I created Gap Incorporated’s contribution to the international “It Gets Better” campaign. This video, my first live-action video, not only launched my commercial/editorial career but also positioned video as a major component in my artistic practice. 

Q: How did you learn about the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition?

A: When NPG relaunched in 2006, I took a quick trip to DC to check out the museum and completely fell in love with a series of exhibitions that looked at a single important individual through the various “portraits” [the “One Life” series] they left behind/sat for during their lifetime. When I moved to the West Coast in 2007, I lost touch with the museum as I burrowed into my studies.

My interest and knowledge of the programming reignited during the run of the exhibition “Hide/Seek,” a show I was very interested in seeing and luckily did see before it moved to other venues. Consequently, when a few friends told me about the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, I immediately put the next entry date on my calendar! Being a part of the lineage of the organization is definitely a dream come true. 

Q: Tell us about the piece you submitted to the competition.

A: I submitted the video installation Sharrod (Turn/Twirl).

I began working with Sharrod, the main protagonist of the piece, at the end of 2008 while I was home on holiday in my hometown, the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. At the time, I was completing the project “He Opened Up Somewhere Along the Eastern Shore” and was not only hungry for a new project but also very interested in how the military grooms and sculpts its young recruits. (The idea was a natural transition from the project I was finishing up.) Sharrod’s mother and my father were coworkers and friends, and by happenstance, Sharrod was also a freshman at my alma mater, Salem High School. Most important, he was enrolled in the military’s high school preparatory program NJROTC, the Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corp. 

Sharrod (Turn/Twirl) was created during the winter of 2010. Earlier that year, Sharrod told me a story about an experience he had at a mock boot camp. According to Sharrod, the commanding officer made all of the young recruits stand at attention to be inspected for long periods of time. Sharrod shared that a few of the young men started losing their balance, and one passed out because they were locking their knees and stopping the blood flow to their brain. (I should note that I have always been fascinated by the military salute and have even tried to re-create the perfect salute myself in my bathroom mirror.)

I asked Sharrod to re-create the salute as a durational exercise, but this time my camera would be the one doing the inspection. After about ten minutes, I was thoroughly bored and told Sharrod that the idea was a bust and apologized for wasting his time. As I began breaking down my equipment, Sharrod, holding the salute, turned slightly and I saw what would become Sharrod (Turn/Twirl). I set the camera back up, explained my vision and captured the raw footage that would become Sharrod (Turn/Twirl).

Q: Tell us about your larger body of work.

A: I’m really interested in openness, transparency, cycles, and expectations. I’ll leave the latter two, cycles and expectations, for a later question and will instead focus on how openness and transparency inform and in some ways guide my inquiry and focus.

When I was a teenager, my parents sat my sister and me down to tell us a family secret. At that moment, my family’s narrative split into two—the reality I had been living and the one in which I was asked to rectify and assimilate. As the years went by, I began to see ruptures in the various lives all around me, including my own. For example, friends’ parents were catching spouses in extramarital affairs; I was hiding my sexuality from my family and some friends; friends/soldiers were struggling with the deaths of other friends but unable to share publicly because they thought it was not masculine/honorable, etc.

These schisms between a secret/private emotional life and a public experience confused me greatly. When I finished the initial process of coming out, the breach I was seeing in other lives began to become the focus of my work. This awareness manifests itself in a variety of ways. Sometimes, I choose to focus on the disconnect mentioned above, and ask questions about why it is present and what motivating factors perpetuate the schism between private and public. Other times, I choose to document and present an unguarded picture of the things I often see hiding in plain sight.

Q: What are you currently working on? 

A: I am currently working on a project called "We always thought the walls would protect us, but suddenly realized they were as weak as our frames." The installation will open at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery as part of a two-person show called “Conversations 6” in early 2013.

The piece continues my interest in family, affect, home, loss, collaborating with my subjects, and storytelling but introduces my recent fascination with theater into the mix. “We always thought the walls would protect us, but suddenly realized they were as weak as our frames” is the first in what I imagine will be a series of projects/manifestations about what I experienced and have been processing since 2010. In 2010, my first long-term relationship ended, my family lost our home due to consequences stemming from the recession, and my little (and only) sister died very unexpectedly.

This first project deals mainly with the loss of my family home; however, as I have been making and writing about the piece, I realize that there are definitely references to the departure of my boyfriend and the sudden loss of my sister. 

Q: How has your work changed over time?

A: My work has definitely changed over time. In 2002, I made a portrait of my parents, Jeff and Jackie Hanasik (below), which basically opened my eyes to not only the power of images but also clarified for me—and I think my audience—what I was up to in my work. From the moment I brought that picture into my junior seminar at SUNY–Purchase to about 2006–7, I was primarily focused on creating medium- to large- format, somewhat static portraits.

By the time I entered graduate school in 2007, I was restless and bored with the process, practice, and especially rules of exhibiting photographs. The photography world had burst open as weblogs proliferated and the photo world seemed to get bigger. This was awesome but seemed somehow smaller, as I felt like I was seeing the same types of pictures over and over again. Video and installation became more interesting to me, as did nontraditional exhibition formats being explored earlier in the decade by Wolfgang Tilmans.

While boredom was definitely a motivating factor, I know now that it was really frustration about not being able to create experiences that truly transported my viewer into the spaces, mindsets, and/or questions that I was trying to develop and was curious about in my work. Over the course of the last five years (and two long-term projects), my practice is now richer, more diverse, and my intentions and concepts have become much more nuanced and, I hope, clearer to the viewer.

Q: Tell us about a seminal experience you’ve had as an artist.

A: In the fall of 2009, I presented my first solo exhibition, “He Opened Up Somewhere Along the Eastern Shore,” in New York City at +Kris Graves Projects. As the opening reception was winding down, and only a few people were left in the gallery, two women caught my attention, so I went over and introduced myself. One of the women appeared to be consoling the other one and I asked if everything was all right. With tears in her eyes, the woman who was crying looked up at me and said, “Thank you. My son returned from Iraq a few months ago and well, he just didn’t seem right and I could not understand. Tonight, after looking at your project, I think I understand what he is going through. Thank you.” Needless to say, that interaction has stuck with me ever since. 

Q: Who is your favorite artist?

A: Naming just one is much too difficult, so instead, here are a few: Larry Sultan, Paul Cadmus, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Jesper Just, Collier Schorr, Dan Flavin, and Paul Chan.

Q: If you could work with any artist (past or present) who would it be?

A: Larry Kramer. He’s popped up a lot for me in my twenties. I just recently had the chance to see The Normal Heart at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and thought it was absolutely amazing. His “portraits” in that play and in the book Faggots are incredible. I have no idea what we’d make together, but I think the way he uses personal biography as an igniting force for drama, portraiture, and storytelling is really compelling and in line with my own interests and practice. 

Q: What inspires you?

A: Expectations and cycles and finding ways to expose these, unravel them and ask questions why we fall into/accept them in the first place.

Growing up in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, I was inundated by narrow views of masculinity and femininity and the conservative religious right. Although my family traveled up and down the East Coast a lot as a kid, it was not until I entered my twenties and moved to New York and then San Francisco that I realized how much I was beholden to suffocating ideas about gender presentation, sexuality, and family dynamics.

As my work has matured, I’ve been able to investigate these earlier experiences, locate them in culture and embark on new projects that explode them open. Ultimately, I hope to ask questions that motivate viewers to locate and examine similarly closed perspectives in themselves.

Jeff and Jackie Hanasik / Jason Hanasik, 2002 / Digital C-Print / 20x20 inches