Object Project

Photos by Jeff McLane

Featuring: Rebecca Morris, Linda Stark, and Alex Olson

Object Project is a new arm of our ongoing portrait series.
Over the next year, we will shift the focus from artist portraits, and instead zoom in to examine the objects that live in the much-mythologized artist’s studio. Using the “chain-letter” format, I have chosen the first artist, and each artist will choose the one that follows, forming an organic network. Tasked with a studio visit, artists have gone on scavenger hunts in each other’s studios, hoping to uncover an object that speaks to them. The result is something idiosyncratic, a discovery of things which, by proxy, provide a tangential portrait of each artist included.

Lindsay Preston Zappas on Rebecca Morris

On a large door in the corner of Rebecca’s studio, square bits of paper glint with silver and gold edging. They stand silently atop this portal through which every artwork in the studio must pass, exiting to become part of the world. The papers are fragile and substantial, meaningless and highly important. Delicate and haphazard, these fragments—low-fi tools for masking while painting—sit somewhere between tool, ephemera, garbage and artwork, implying a precarious relationship to value and permanence.

Rebecca Morris on Linda Stark

I first met Linda in 1995 when she was having a solo exhibition at Feigen Gallery in Chicago. I was a fan and invited her to speak at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago where I had just finished graduate school and then worked. We have contin- ued to cross paths over the years, showing together, and more recently we’ve traded studio visits, something I have greatly enjoyed. From our visits and conversations, I knew there were several unique and energy elevating objects that Linda kept in her studio. Of these I chose her “studio cat” who sits in the northwest corner, positioned to face the entrance. This crea- ture is classically cat, both lithe and elegant. As a guardian, its sentient qualities feel emphasized by the halo of its mane and the trace elongation of its front legs and shoulders: This is a cat with a quiet and concentrated energy, not unlike Linda.

Linda Stark on Alex Olson

She likes that we look like dials and eyes. Sometimes she thinks about impressing our ridges in paint. She believes it is practical to have replacement tops. She muses about incorporating us into works on paper. We are not thrown away.

This feature was originally published in Carla issue 9.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and the founder of Carla. She is an arts correspondent for KCRW. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include those at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), OCHI (Los Angeles), and City Limits (Oakland).

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