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I Explored 'MultiVerses' With Artist Shea Hembrey

'MultiVerses' is a five-artist show fully curated and created by one artist—Shea Hembrey.
Pawnee Calhoun, untitled (double portal), 2014. Corn husks and grass, 44 x 20 x 44 inches.

Shea Hembrey grew up “real rural.” He was raised in the southern tradition, and from the age of five, when he wasn’t being treated to tales from the local cast of characters, he was chopping wood, or on his ATV, riding around the county with his shotgun. Shea Hembrey grew up wild and he’s grateful for that. It taught him to be good with his hands, to be pragmatic, and use what was around him. He made art from kindling and scraps of wood, grass, straw, and any natural materials that were around the Arkansas farm he grew up on. He learned about the beauty of simplicity and the importance of the essential. He learned to discover the world for himself. He ran free, and his imagination ran wild.

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Hembrey, whose new exhibition, MultiVerses, is on display now at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, received critical acclaim when he debuted SEEK: 100 in 2011, “a new international biennial” showcasing work from 100 artists, all of whom were fictional characters invented by Hembrey, who also created all of the work and curated the show.

With MultiVerses, Hembrey returns to this concept, exploring it on a smaller scale and in a more intimate way. The show features only five artists this time: Artemesia Adebayo, Pawnee Calhoun, Harvey Lee, Elgin Rivers, and Phyllia Stanhope, whose artworks come together to create a visually striking and ultimately cohesive narrative experience. Though each of the five artists uses different materials with varied techniques and approaches, Hembrey’s hand is apparent in all of the work.

The Creators Project met Shea Hembrey to discuss MultiVerses, identity, and the roles that artists can play in human progress.

The Creators Project: For MultiVerses, you created each artist’s work in a different studio, in a different city, living under different routines. Did you live as though you were these artists, or as yourself, channeling their energies and perspectives?

Shea Hembrey: It's just fun for me, while I'm sitting there working for hours and hours on end, to play narratives in my head. It’s part of being a Southerner and a storyteller; it’s just how I work, and there’s no reason to fight it. The title, MultiVerses—physicists are starting to talk about, instead of the universe, the multiverse, because we’re pretty certain there’s likely lots of big bangs and little bubbles of universe, which is so hard to wrap your head around because there’s no way we could ever transcend our universe, which is so vast anyway. And then multiple verses, like there’s five different verses of people trying to make models or maps of the universe. I often wish that more people were working on the same subjects that I was, so I just made them exist.

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Your characters: Artemesia, Harvey, Elgin, Pawnee, and Phyllia—how did they come into being?

All the different artists were projects I was going to do myself, but I decided to assign them to pseudonyms and have a group show instead, because I thought that was an interesting way to present this one, and also because it went back in a way and referenced my biennial. All the characters have names that mean something to me. In the biennial they were really out there, but these are more like pseudonyms, so they have a more personal connection. Elgin Rivers, like, these are Elgin Rivers’ [artworks], and my dad grew up on the Black River at Elgin, and his father ran the ferry, so, I just kind of played with real names from my life that worked and fit the project.

How much do you know about each of these characters?

Actually, these— [Elgin Rivers’ and Artemesia Adebayo’s art; displayed on two adjacent walls of the gallery] this is a couple, They married. I’ve been playing with how they could have this conversation with each other, and how one could make the other happen. They met in London. I have this whole long narrative about Elgin and Artemesia. Who, actually I always think of as Art Amnesia. I love that name, Artemesia.

Like the Renaissance artist?

Exactly. And there’s a lot of chiaroscuro in these, so I thought, oh that’s perfect.

You work across many mediums and with any and all material. Does the material inform the art before the art informs the artist?

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I always listen to the material. It will tell you what it wants to do, and you don’t fight it, you listen. That’s what I love about doing everything by hand, because you can have a dialogue with the material, and you can put your energy in it. And this, for Elgin Rivers, I wanted everything to be really basic building blocks, like literally little wooden cubes, toothpicks, like really simple things.

Your 2011 biennial, SEEK, featured work from 100 fictional artists, all created by you. Is MultiVerses a deeper exploration of the work you did in SEEK, a sister concept, or a different concept entirely?

It’s different. I’m not interested in exploring my identity in my work; I’m interested in transcending it and trying to get beyond me, to the bigger questions, like how is the universe put together and how do things have power. I think if we’re going to survive, art should be asking those bigger, transcendent questions. I really want that to happen, so that was one reason I wanted to do it again. Another reason: so many visual artists today don’t make their own work. They have assistants make it and they become almost a brand or a name, and I like flipping it and making everything by hand and then giving it to someone else. It’s a total reversal of that way of working.

I think you’ve found a root of where art’s power lies, in it’s ability to connect you to a larger picture, to nature, and to the creativity that is naturally all around us in the world.

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Everything is nature. Everything is natural. An iPhone is natural, if you really break it down; it’s a mode of communication. It’s just a very mediated, altered piece of nature, and it will go back to nature. It’s weird how we think of ourselves as separate from nature and we shouldn’t. We’re always in nature. And growing up on a farm, I just so often go to natural materials, like grass; really humble materials, too. I like the whole idea of a bugs wing, or horse hair, not altered in any way. Even though it can look really exotic, it’s just this really simple thing.

The challenge is to craft simple materials into complex and meaningful forms.

I’m an explorer-maker for sure, and I always have been. But that’s what humanity is, isn’t it? We’re explorer makers. I like pushing it to the edge, like I wanted [Elgin Rivers’ art] to have a broken beauty; almost to be scary and too dark, but actually there’s color and there’s beauty there. I think that’s what the universe is. So how do you show that visually? These [circular models made of colorful feathers] are crazy right? Breathe on them! I wanted something that interacted with you. If you get close and just look, your breathing alone makes it move, and then you blow and it just really goes wild.

Which artist made these?

This is Harvey Lee. Harvey Lee’s the colorful one. These are a response to some of the best mapping that’s going on right now. If you look up Planck dust maps, they’re crazy maps of like, colors in the round. I’m always trying to look at the latest scientific illustration, and usually it seems so abstract, even though it’s so basic. They’re energy maps; they’re trying to get across a distribution of energy, so I wanted them to have movement.

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Is there significance to the colors in these models?

These are the feathers used to make fly fishing lures. The color is just ridiculous, acidic and saturated. What’s so fun about doing this is that there’s no rules about color coding a map, so why not use hot pink and tan and sea foam green, in a way you wouldn’t normally do in a painting? I embrace narrative. I don’t go about it saying what I do is important.

If you did then your work wouldn’t really be honest, because you are trying to transcend your ego and separate your work from yourself.

I think we all need to get the fuck over ourselves. If we’re going to make it as a species, and we’re going to survive and progress, we need to spread resources and figure out how to deal with the planet and move on. We get hung up on this idea of identity and self and ego, and if people in the arts aren’t trying to transcend that, we really need to be. It sounds so grandiose, but it’s not. You can do some project like this and be playful about it and say, ok we really need to get over ourselves and ask bigger questions and tap into what has power.

Stop thinking 'Universe' and start thinking 'Multiverse.'

It’s interesting to talk to physicists about these bigger questions, because when they start to talk about it they really are on a quest to understand, and it’s a really beautiful thing. I want to hear more artists talking like this. When you start asking how they know these things, and what is the route to truth, it always comes back to mathematics.

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Dark Matters was the title of another show you did, in 2012. The themes you’re exploring are the mysteries of the universe, but you’re not approaching them from an angle of trying to solve these mysteries.

No! Let’s celebrate these questions, and get involved in these questions. When you think of artists from the past, don’t you think of the Renaissance artists and how they were so engaged with science and everything that was going on? I’m really trying to engage with what’s going on in breakthroughs now. I’m not trying to be didactic, but I hope I’m sparking people to be interested in these larger questions.

And perhaps sparking other artists to start expanding the focus of their work.

It’s funny, because the art world can be so into its rules and conventions, as if they’re so important, but they were created. What lasts is work that has heart and soul and is thoughtful for the time and is well made, and if you can push a little bit in each of those directions and instead of being obsessed with the new, just be obsessed with the necessary, then you’re getting somewhere. It’s the whole other product of me growing up on a farm and being really pragmatic and being really practical about things. It’s a weird mix. It’s who I am so I don’t fight it. It’s fine.

You’re just living life as an explorer-maker.

Making some shit, exploring some stuff. Exactly.

MultiVerses will be on display at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery from October 30 to December 15.

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