NOAH GREENE - MAY 2020
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
My name is Noah Greene.
I make sculptures and paintings, though it’s not always clear which is which—it’s a pretty porous relationship.
Before the pandemic, I was a preparator at a university art museum. I’ve also spent a lot of time in school and working construction jobs. These days I garden and cut firewood, drink a lot of coffee.
My name is Noah Greene.
I make sculptures and paintings, though it’s not always clear which is which—it’s a pretty porous relationship.
Before the pandemic, I was a preparator at a university art museum. I’ve also spent a lot of time in school and working construction jobs. These days I garden and cut firewood, drink a lot of coffee.
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Where are you and what are you currently working on?
I’m sheltering in place in a somewhat decrepit, but spacious farmhouse in rural western Oregon where I live with my partner. The house adjoins this old farmstead and all these overgrown orchards, disintegrating buildings patched up with tarps. It isn’t a bad place to be quarantined.
I’ve been making a lot of smaller works recently, paintings and some sculptures right at the edge of being anything. I’m pretty obsessively interested in how the work inhabits a space, converses with it and gets absorbed by it. There’s a kind of domestic presence/absence language in the stuff I’ve been making recently that I think has much to do with where I am. The “studio” is just a small unused bedroom and I’ve been installing and arranging work in other parts of the house, sheds on the property--
Not all that much time has elapsed since this stay at home order/pandemic came down, but so many things, potentials and plans have been severed and of course that’s like this ambient, clouded kind of presence in the work.
I’m sheltering in place in a somewhat decrepit, but spacious farmhouse in rural western Oregon where I live with my partner. The house adjoins this old farmstead and all these overgrown orchards, disintegrating buildings patched up with tarps. It isn’t a bad place to be quarantined.
I’ve been making a lot of smaller works recently, paintings and some sculptures right at the edge of being anything. I’m pretty obsessively interested in how the work inhabits a space, converses with it and gets absorbed by it. There’s a kind of domestic presence/absence language in the stuff I’ve been making recently that I think has much to do with where I am. The “studio” is just a small unused bedroom and I’ve been installing and arranging work in other parts of the house, sheds on the property--
Not all that much time has elapsed since this stay at home order/pandemic came down, but so many things, potentials and plans have been severed and of course that’s like this ambient, clouded kind of presence in the work.
What’s your studio routine like? Any zany habits?
I like to work in the mornings, really early is ideal. My routine involves a lot of coffee and reading in fragments to get acquainted, rearranging the space. Often I listen to music, these days dominated by NTS radio. A lot of my practice is a kind of looped sequence of looking and gathering, turning things around, removing parts, scraping things down, arranging them in a space, trying to feel that out. So the studio as a fixed location isn’t always the thing so much as the headspace.
I purge nearly as much as I collect. I try to keep things passing through. Materials stack up, older works get reabsorbed, parts get used and then often they need to move along. The studio is more of a conduit I guess. Nothing too zany. I start with something, often something pretty modest and then the work is a process of trying to get rid of it, scrape it down.
I like to work in the mornings, really early is ideal. My routine involves a lot of coffee and reading in fragments to get acquainted, rearranging the space. Often I listen to music, these days dominated by NTS radio. A lot of my practice is a kind of looped sequence of looking and gathering, turning things around, removing parts, scraping things down, arranging them in a space, trying to feel that out. So the studio as a fixed location isn’t always the thing so much as the headspace.
I purge nearly as much as I collect. I try to keep things passing through. Materials stack up, older works get reabsorbed, parts get used and then often they need to move along. The studio is more of a conduit I guess. Nothing too zany. I start with something, often something pretty modest and then the work is a process of trying to get rid of it, scrape it down.
What are your favorite materials to work with?
I spend a lot of time looking for material and not really knowing what I’m looking for specifically. The looking seems to generate the work. Rural, peripheral America is full of strange unfinished projects, haunted architecture, cheap materials that get thrown out or stored away or mixed up with all kinds of organic matter when the non-human world takes things back. It happens fast, often. I’m really into that sort of disquieted mundane world of objects and sensations—the language of getting by, use stains, scarcity up against abundance, be it cheap mass production or the natural world. I’m interested in the kind of haunted baggage of dislocated function.
My other answer is probably that my favorite material is negative space. That present absence thing—charged and silent. I’m pretty obsessed with that whole lineage of artists who’ve shown empty galleries—Laurie Parsons and Yves Klein and David Hammons. I think I’m very predictably turned on by that.
I spend a lot of time looking for material and not really knowing what I’m looking for specifically. The looking seems to generate the work. Rural, peripheral America is full of strange unfinished projects, haunted architecture, cheap materials that get thrown out or stored away or mixed up with all kinds of organic matter when the non-human world takes things back. It happens fast, often. I’m really into that sort of disquieted mundane world of objects and sensations—the language of getting by, use stains, scarcity up against abundance, be it cheap mass production or the natural world. I’m interested in the kind of haunted baggage of dislocated function.
My other answer is probably that my favorite material is negative space. That present absence thing—charged and silent. I’m pretty obsessed with that whole lineage of artists who’ve shown empty galleries—Laurie Parsons and Yves Klein and David Hammons. I think I’m very predictably turned on by that.
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How has your work changed over the years?
It keeps getting pared down. There’s less and less of it. I like to think I’m getting better at restraint, letting things speak for themselves. But I’m not so sure.
It keeps getting pared down. There’s less and less of it. I like to think I’m getting better at restraint, letting things speak for themselves. But I’m not so sure.
Who else do you recommend we look at / read / listen to / cook with?
Rachel Cusk’s novels Outline, Transit and Kudos. She is unbelievable. Spare like a razor.
Li Po’s poems. It’s all there really.
Michael A. Muller’s record from last year, Lower River. Field recordings/drones/heavy dream melody. It’s appropriate listening I think.
Mickey Newbury’s Looks Like Rain. Sort of always wearing that one out.
None of those are visual art things. I miss looking at art in real life. But if we’re talking about online only viewed art—I’ve been really taken with Essex Street Gallery’s current (recent?) show of paintings by the late Adrian Morris.
Makes me want to give up, in the best way.
I’m really fortunate to have a partner that is a farmer and so our cooking really revolves around whatever she’s harvesting. If you can find a way to support local farms and farm workers in any way, now more than ever, I highly recommend that. We all have to eat.
Rachel Cusk’s novels Outline, Transit and Kudos. She is unbelievable. Spare like a razor.
Li Po’s poems. It’s all there really.
Michael A. Muller’s record from last year, Lower River. Field recordings/drones/heavy dream melody. It’s appropriate listening I think.
Mickey Newbury’s Looks Like Rain. Sort of always wearing that one out.
None of those are visual art things. I miss looking at art in real life. But if we’re talking about online only viewed art—I’ve been really taken with Essex Street Gallery’s current (recent?) show of paintings by the late Adrian Morris.
Makes me want to give up, in the best way.
I’m really fortunate to have a partner that is a farmer and so our cooking really revolves around whatever she’s harvesting. If you can find a way to support local farms and farm workers in any way, now more than ever, I highly recommend that. We all have to eat.
Any exciting projects on the horizon?
Honestly, the horizon seems pretty hazy and indistinct—a bunch of things all on indefinite hold.
We’ll see what unfolds.
Honestly, the horizon seems pretty hazy and indistinct—a bunch of things all on indefinite hold.
We’ll see what unfolds.
website: https://noahgreene.com/
