What Art Supplies Can Only Be Found in America

Remember, for a second, if you could name one essential production or tool that y'all could not exercise your job without.

It's a tough question, but information technology'due south particularly difficult to respond if your work relies on your creativity and creative skill. Have yous e'er thought about what type of oils a famous painter favors, or what kind of plaster works best? Or, peradventure, if sinking money into expensive brushes or paper is even worth it?

Given that prominent artists today are celebrated for their ideas and execution, we're more likely to pick their brains for their motives and meaning behind their work, rather than their preferred make of oil pastel, or which household item is integral to their practice. We bask the details of artists' inspirations and processes, but nosotros rarely know about the traditional art materials and offbeat objects that they love the nearly. So, we decided to find out.

We asked a smattering of artists—from deft painters and sculptors to new media innovators and conceptual masters—to tell us about their favorite art materials, and how they've propelled (and in some cases, fifty-fifty inspired) their practices. While many accept clear preferences, others asserted that their work does non rely on a single item, or mentioned objects that you'd never find in a fine art supply store. Below, we share their responses, ranging from beloved pigment tubes to a bootleg concoction inspired past the chemical makeup of the human body.

Yellowwood

Claudia Comte's fascination with wood—"in all its manifestations and forms," she explained—has fueled her polish organic sculptures, which take shapes similar plump doughnuts, curvy cacti, and anthropomorphic objects. To make these works, she sources large trunks of non-endangered trees and carves away at them with a chainsaw. Though her work extends to marble, bronze, and digital animations, wood is always the genesis, Comte asserted. And while she'south created sleek, enticing forms from a vast range of tree species—walnut, mahogany, sequoia, ruby oak, acacia, pino, amongst others—her favorite variety to appointment is yellowwood, a tree native to S Africa that is the color its name suggests, though the wood is speckled with gray or black spots.

"It has a rather unique appearance and reminds me of giraffe fur," Comte offered, calculation that the "canary-like vibrancy" immediately inspired her to create a new body of work. She commencement encountered the forest dorsum in 2013, during a residency in Johannesburg through the Swiss art council Prohelvetia. The tropical woods is also well-suited to etching, every bit it'due south rigid and doesn't fissure hands. "It was very of import for me, equally information technology withal is today, to use non-endangered endemic woods," Comte explained. She'll go along this tradition next year during a residency at the marine laboratory of the Alligator Head Foundation, through a committee past the TBA21–Academy. There, she'll utilize woods that'south native to Jamaica to create a new body of piece of work inspired past the ocean.

Guerra Acrylic 65 and Thickener #ane

Few painters work quite so sculpturally as Gina Beavers. The secret ingredients behind her weighty, textural paintings—often of mounds of junk food or brand-up tutorials—are 2 products from the creative person-owned New York Urban center paint shop Guerra Pigment and Pigment. For a decade, Beavers has been using Acrylic 65—"a super high-quality acrylic that is highly adhesive," she noted—and Thickener #1, which is used to thicken acrylic paints. "I combine the two to build upwardly the thick surfaces of pigment that I use in my paintings," Beavers said.

The Due east Village paint shop'south proprietor, Art Guerra, originally developed these formulas. An artist himself, he had a studio in the aforementioned building as Beavers in Bushwick. "One mean solar day, he brought me some to experiment with, and I was hooked," she recalled. "I had been looking for a way out of the super-flat, difficult-edge abstractions I had been making, and the acrylic arrived at the perfect time."

Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Color in Olive Greenish (Permanence A, Serial 2)

Sanam Khatibi creates alluring figurative paintings—allegorical works that portray homo figures succumbing to fundamental desires—where rich blues and greens and soft browns and seafoams prepare the tone. The creative person noted that she oft tries out new oil colors and brands, only within her distinct palette, a sure olive green has been a constant for effectually 5 years.

"I utilise this colour in practically every single ane of my paintings," Khatibi said. "Information technology has become a sort of base of operations for me, and I utilise it also as a foundation to create other colors."

One Shot Enamel Paint in Proper Purple and Kool Crimson

Later ending a years-long collaboration with a fellow painter, Marilyn Minter began using enamel paint from a signage company in 1986 to distinguish her new work. "Most people utilize enamel paint with hard edges and graphic shapes (like

and

)," Minter explained. She uses it to portray soft modulations of colour. "I could never get the deep richness and glow from oil that I can go with enamel," she added.

Enamel is translucent and dries apace, which allows her to easily layer colors. That technique has been crucial, she explained, especially in her recent paintings of close-ups of women's faces behind a veil of mist. "I feel similar I needed to work with enamel for years before I could get to the technical level of beingness able to paint the last layer of mist or steam," Minter noted. "My team and I get better every yr. I don't think nosotros could accept done this ten years ago; we are more than similar

now."

Food and drink cans

Moroccan photographer Hassan Hajjaj keeps a enshroud of food and drink cans in his studio—the materials he uses to construct the frames that surroundings his dazzling, colour-soaked portraits. He commencement began using them in 1993, likely, he said, because he grew up with these household objects. His favorites are cans of products by the brand Aicha, which is also his mother's proper name.

While he incorporates cans for their colors, shapes, graphics, and fonts, he makes a betoken to employ products from a mix of local and international brands, sourcing them from Morocco, Dubai, and London (he grew upwards in the English capital letter, and now splits his time between in that location and Marrakech). "This helps my work communicate to the public as they encounter something they are familiar with," Hajjaj explained.

Belgian linen, Libeco batch 17

The one constant material in Hayv Kahraman's practice has been linen, the substrate she uses for her elegant paintings of women that are informed past enquiry and her experiences as an Iraqi refugee. It'south not just any linen, though—since 2009, she's been sourcing it straight from the Belgian linen wholesaler Libeco. "This linen has a tight weave with very footling knots, and that's difficult to find," she explained.

She currently uses the fabric from batch 17, which corresponds to the year the flax was harvested and manufactured. "The amount of sun and rain the crops get that specific year will determine the hue of the linen," Kahraman explained (for instance, more pelting causes a bluish tint; more sun, a yellow tint). For many years, she preferred linen with the warmer hue (fabricated of crops from 2004), only as it became more hard to source, she's had to employ a more recent batch.

True to the creative person's smart, enquiry-intensive practice, the linen holds conceptual significance, too. Linen was introduced in 16th-century Venice as an culling to canvas that was better suited to the climate and easier to roll upwards and transport. Given its close ties to Western art, Kahraman sees it as "a surface in which I can dispute European concepts of power," she explained. "So it becomes a material to decolonize. It's besides a common and familiar material for our Western eyes to assimilate that and then serves as the perfect decoy for me to speak nigh dark-brown bodies and subjectivities." Additionally, she chooses to proceed much of the linen bare (not gessoed or painted) considering information technology reminds her of "the color of Iraqi sand."

Invertebrates

Max Hooper Schneider first encountered invertebrates—the living creatures that would later inspire and occupy his art—while growing up, peering into tide pools along California's Pacific Coast. The backboneless animals, which range from crabs and jellyfish to spiders, connected to be a passion as he grew up, surrounding himself with aquariums. "Every bit an creative person, I quickly began to understand invertebrates every bit an essential medium for storytelling and systemic sculpture," he offered. (He's especially addicted of arthropods and cnidarians.)

Indeed, in creating his works, the creative person, who studied biology and landscape architecture, weaves philosophical, oft dystopian narratives through complex ecosystems—like Utopia Banished (2015), where live leeches slither in a tank with a white porcelain cake, or The Concluding Caucasian War (2014), where Ocypodidae crabs share a vitrine with a mud-covered Toshiba laptop. While Hooper Schneider is drawn to the "lure of their symmetrical body plans, spiny skins, and eusocial beliefs" of invertebrates, more important is their "extremophilic potential"—their ability to thrive in harsh environments, he explained. "They volition continue to colonize the planet long subsequently humankind has exited."

Aluminum Venetian blinds

New York-based creative person Anne Libby, who creates machine-like sculptures that resemble elegant scaffolding, began using metal Venetian blinds in brushed argent, copper, and gilt after living in a first-floor flat that had them. "Blinds accept a straight effect on the amount of privacy I take from the street and the amount of light that comes in [through] my windows," Libby explained. "I interacted with them and so much on a daily basis, and eventually decided to cut them downward for my sculptures." (She'southward since recovered discarded sets on the street and bought them on eBay.)

To use the blinds, Libby takes them apart and wraps the metal strips around pieces of wood, and then nails them into place. "The blinds are a line between urban architectural and domestic infinite," the creative person explained. "Metallic blinds are both reflective and transparent in a way that's related to gimmicky compages itself."

Paasche H-type single action airbrush with a #3 tip

During grad school, New York-based painter Betty Tompkins "gave upwardly brushes and started to use spray guns," she said, hoping to reinvent her approach to painting. Even so, when she moved into Columbia University's graduate student housing with her first hubby in 1969, she quickly learned that the close quarters were not conducive to that method. "I went downtown to Pearl Paint and bought the airbrush, taught myself how to utilise it, and that was that," Tompkins explained.

She now has two Paasche airbrushes that she'south used for about of her striking sex paintings, which feature close-ups of sexual acts and moments of comprehend in an airy grisaille palette. While working, she'll dedicate one airbrush to white or lighter tones, and the other to chromatic blacks. (Originally, she only had i, merely found she was spending as well much fourth dimension cleaning it out.)

"It is magic to me," Tompkins explained. "I stand over hither, and the painting gradually comes out over there. Using them has taught me patience. The start 20 layers or so look terrible. Eventually, the painting has plenty paint on it to offset to be subtle. It took me a long time to accept this."

Fabric

Jeffrey Gibson uses fabric in "almost everything" he creates—from canvases for paintings, to the linings of his garments, to vintage textiles and weavings he employs in wall-hangings. The Native American artist is known for his multifaceted, mixed-media works that address identity and promote inclusivity. (His newest works will feature in an exhibition this September at the Wellin Museum of Art in upstate New York.) "The fabrics that I use often have a history or a specific aesthetic to them that speaks of a cultural moment," Gibson explained. "I think about fourth dimension a lot when mixing them and trying to represent the past, present, and hereafter."

Gibson began collecting fabrics during college in the 1990s, and often buys them while traveling. Now, he sources well-nigh of his fabrics and textiles online from Etsy and eBay. "I take found everything from 18th-century vestment embroideries to holographic vinyl," Gibson explained. He besides cuts up his own clothing and that of family members for hereafter works. "Mixing them is like making a quilt," he explained. "I can as well adorn them, pigment on them, appliqué on them. Cloth is truly the nigh generous material that I take found."

"Body Without Soul"

"Body Without Soul," as well known equally "Liquid Human," is a recipe that Marguerite Humeau concocted in her studio, inspired by the chemical components of the human body—including oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and dozens of other elements. She orders the materials, which are oftentimes powders, online through sites such as eBay, and mixes them together to form a liquid.

She get-go used the potion for her 2016 exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, "FOXP2," to dye a carpet upon which elephant sculptures were standing, thus exploring the relationship between animals and humans. She sees the concoction every bit "a conceptual framework" that she can apply to new projects in different ways—in other exhibitions since, she's shown the concoction in its liquid form.

Williamsburg oil pigment

Nikki Maloof—who creates impossibly vibrant paintings of animals and insects set in blueprint-filled interiors or verdant environs—admits that Williamsburg oil paint is probably ane of the reasons she became a painter. She describes standing in front end of a glass case of the paint like a giddy kid in a processed store. "For me, these tubes contain more than but cute hues," Maloof explained. "They are bottled potential for something I haven't seen. Often, when I am stuck, I become to the art store and look for some new color, hoping it will reveal some new secret. Sometimes, when I am lucky, it does."

She outset encountered the brand through her undergrad professor at Indiana University, Barry Gealt—"a major paint nerd," she recalled—who encouraged his students to have every bit many colors as possible. She get-go held a tube of Williamsburg at his wondrous, paint-filled studio. Once she tried it, she was hooked—both to its seductive colors, and to its "specific sticky, almost toothpaste-similar texture," she described.

"For me, so much of painting is a sensory experience," Maloof explained. "The way a paint feels beneath my castor is equally of import equally the image that is revealed.…My paw has learned to manipulate it in a second-nature kind of style. Perhaps information technology's how a specific musical instrument might feel to a musician, or a certain clay in the hands of a sculptor."

Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade doesn't have a preferred fabric or tool for creating her work; rather, she lets the concepts behind her pieces drive what she'll utilise. "It'south non really me choosing the cloth; when I have a concept and this concept demands a specific textile, then there is no other way than choosing information technology," Kwade explained. Information technology's a matter of finding the correct material that matches the needs and motives backside each piece of work.

For instance, Kwade's serial "Hypothetisches Gebilde" required pure copper. The metal, which is believed to have originated through the stars or a supernova and is known for its conductive powers, was the platonic cloth to realize these sculptures, which were inspired past wormholes—the theoretical channels that connect two locations or dimensions in the universe.

Shoe soles

In his sculptural works and installations, Gabriel de la Mora oft incorporates discarded objects that have outlived their original purposes, from eggshells to microscope slides. "The stop of something is, to me, the starting bespeak for something else," he explained. In 2013, he began using old shoe soles for a serial of sculptures and assemblages entitled "The Weight of Thought."

For years, de la Mora has had an assistant collect prophylactic and leather shoe soles from downtown Mexico City (some are establish, some are bought). Once they arrive at his studio, the soles are classified and organized into pairs, based on the holes they have and which human foot they vest to. The artist mines the objects for their universality and the personal hints they retain from their former owners. Ultimately, he cuts them down and combines them to create conceptual sculptures and assemblages.

Beads

Liza Lou has become renowned for her use of chaplet, offset with her groundbreaking life-size installation Kitchen (1991–96) through to the present, employing them to create wistful tapestries and undulating wall reliefs in rich jewel tones. (Her latest piece of work will feature in a new evidence at Lehmann Maupin in New York this September.) Nonetheless, these are non your everyday, commonplace beads, Lou asserted. "My beads are of the 'fuck you' variety, the kind that wouldn't be defenseless expressionless on a ball gown," she said. "They aren't polite, and they aren't always pretty."

Given that beads are her primary material, Lou orders custom varieties in specific sizes, shapes, and colors from a drinking glass factory in Nihon. What inspires her well-nigh beads are their limitations—for case, they tin't be reshaped or blended with water. "I'm interested in the mode in which chaplet demand a life shift; their very nature demands patience and focus, and an ungodly corporeality of time," Lou explained. "Best of all, they connect me to deep and ancient traditions, to women and laborers, to traditional skills, to the blood, sweat, and tears of everyday life."

Antiques and audio

Radcliffe Bailey's poetic assemblages and installations draw upon his personal and family history, conjuring discussions of race and beginnings. His affinity for found antique objects traces back to art school, where he grew tired of using the aforementioned fine art supplies every bit everyone else. "I just didn't desire to go the same road," he said. "I was looking for means to complicate cloth." With antique objects, he explained, he's able to stride back in fourth dimension. "The smells, too," he added. "I appreciate things created in the past." (His works can now be seen in a solo exhibition at Jack Shainman'south The School, in Kinderhook, New York.)

Music has likewise long found its way into Bailey'south practice. "I'k thinking nigh non-traditional materials from history, and how they can inform my work," he explained. "Both the objects and sounds inherently bear layers of history and understanding. They hold time and space within them."

Pens, newspaper, MacBook, Photoshop, Final Cutting Pro

"Without time, I cannot brand anything," said Lynn Hershman Leeson, who, for decades, has been pioneering new media art to tap into the relationship between humans and engineering science. And while she's used everything from a wax bandage of her own confront to a telerobotic doll with webcam eyes, her get-to supplies are straightforward: pens, newspaper, and her MacBook, which she relies on for the use of Photoshop and Concluding Cut Pro. "I first describe what I am thinking, create a plan to bring the drawing into life, and apply Photoshop or Final Cutting to more than specifically animate the projection," Hershman Leeson explained.

The creative person has been using both programs since the mid-1990s; however, each piece starts with drawing—"pen and paper, whether information technology is a script, or an interactive installation, or a film," she said. Hershman Leeson finds that using these tools helps her clarify her thoughts, and allows for "the deeply hidden, existent work to emerge."

Painter Shara Hughes asserted that she does non play favorites when it comes to her materials; she prefers to use a plethora of materials, and "to let each one polish in its ain mode." Her paintings have incorporated a wide array of paints—oil, acrylic, enamel, watercolor, vinyl, spray paint, paint pen, gouache—as well as dye, marker, glitter, oil confined, and the utilise of an airbrush. Fifty-fifty her drawings are often made from a melange of materials.

"I use paint when it'due south one-time and crusty for specific things, next to nicer fancier paint for other specific results," Hughes offered. Recently, during a recent residency run past the pigment manufacturer Liquitex, she was introduced to new products like a water-based spray pigment. "It's squeamish to exist able to layer that in ways I wasn't able to with other household spray paints," she said. "I similar discovering different types of pigment that make me larn more about how they sit on the surface when applied in different ways, and on different types of surfaces."

DAP Plaster of Paris

Plaster model for Paula Hayes, Bird Baths, 2006. Photo past Ethan Herrington. Courtesy of the artist.

Plaster model for Paula Hayes, Bird Baths, 2006. Photo past Ethan Herrington. Courtesy of the artist.

Paula Hayes, who is most often recognized for her glass-blown terrarium sculptures, has had a love for plaster of Paris e'er since childhood. Named later on the urban center where large deposits of gypsum were once found, the fine white powder can be combined with water to create plaster casts. Today, Hayes uses information technology to create models for her editioned works.

"I dear how it is similar milk; it has an aboriginal feel and is something y'all get to know the qualities of over time," Hayes explained. "I love the smell, the ascent temperature as it sets up, how to handle information technology then it remains airless. It requires a light and skilful touch though it is and then simple. It taught me all of these things."

Apoxie Sculpt

Inside her practice, which considers the strange relationships betwixt humans and technology, Jillian Mayer has become widely known for her "Slumpies"—playful sculptures in amorphous shapes that are meant to fit a person's trunk as they look at their phone. She's taken to using Apoxie Sculpt, a putty that's piece of cake to mix, "doesn't really go bad, self-hardens, and doesn't stink too much," she explained. "Yous can put it on anything."

Mayer get-go started using the cloth years ago, after she was working with air-dry out dirt and found it disappointing; plus, she didn't have access to a kiln to work in ceramics. She uses the versatile medium not just to sculpt, simply to mend cracks and fill holes. It tin can also be smeared onto other surfaces or sanded downwardly one time information technology's dry. Some other bonus: It'south very durable. "I am pretty clumsy, so I love anything that will not break when I drop or step on it," Mayer said.

3/4-inch steel round stock

Hannah Levy's furniture-similar sculptures—informed past the creative person's background in industrial design—have been known to employ silicone, polyurethane, safe, alabaster, and pearls. Nevertheless, her penchant for 3/4-inch steel tubing is especially evident; she polishes, bends, and welds it to create dynamic armatures. "I like polished steel tube because it's such a commonly used fabric," Levy explained. "When you use it, there is an excitingly overwhelming number of possible references, especially in modernist and modernist-influenced furniture. Actually, information technology's everywhere."

She first encountered the tubing during college, when a grouping of architecture students had used information technology for a project before taking it apart and leaving the pieces up for grabs. "I think I made most of my thesis prove out of information technology," Levy recalled.

Diane Townsend pastels, Derwent Inktense Blocks, Montana spray paint, and soft vine charcoal

"My works are like Kanye'south product—by that I hateful mixed media," explained Curtis Talwst Santiago, who is all-time known for miniature dioramas and drawings that consider contemporary diasporic communities. The artist values his various materials equally, though a sure few have guided his cartoon process over the by 2 years—a combination of products he's picked up at favorite fine art shops during his travels, including Peters Arts in Berlin, Gwartzman'south in Toronto, Rath Art Supplies in Vancouver, and Montana Lisboa in Lisbon.

"Because I'k not classically trained, I intuitively piece of work with these materials, which allow for surprising reactions," Santiago noted. He'll begin a drawing or painting with Derwent Inktense Blocks, which "set up cardinal of the song," he explained. And then he'll use these blocks of pigment to create undertones or, when mixed with water, delicate washes of color. Next, he "mists" the piece with spray paints (he uses a level-six cap on the paint cans) "to add depth to the atmosphere." Adjacent comes soft vine charcoal, his favorite drawing tool. "When the drawing's done and it'southward fourth dimension to fill with color, I look to the box of candy that is Diane Townsend soft pastels," he explained. "Her pigments are so rich, you lot volition want to eat them."

Special cheers to Guerra Paint & Pigment and Blick Art Materials for fine art supplies featured in the header image.

Photograph of Williamsburg oil paints courtesy of Nikki Maloof.

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Source: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-22-artists-materials-inspire-drive-work

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