Columbus may be a city with few nationally-recognized structural landmarks, but Curtis Goldstein paints the city the way he sees it. He showcases the beauty in what some would find ordinary, and preserves the history, grit, and character of Columbus that often goes overlooked. Curtis is part of a new group exhibition called “The Urban Landscape”, currently taking place at The Art Access Gallery in Bexley. An opening reception is being held tomorrow night, and we caught up with Curtis to get more information about his own personal and artistic history in Columbus.
Q) Can you give a little bit of background about yourself as a developing artist and what it was like attending art school in the late 80s in Columbus?
A) I took the first two foundation years at CCAD which, at that time (84-86) and in my opinion, was the best thing about a CCAD education. You learned “chops” and how to work fast and aggressively. They were a bit too steeped in a New-England School Of Realism type of curriculum and did not offer much in the way of visiting artists, and electives. I’m sure all of that has since changed. When I transferred to OSU, it was a broadening experience. Suddenly, there were all of these electives, visiting artists, and students making more than figure paintings and lettering assignments. In that liberating environment, I was able to experiment a lot more and discovered that I had a very broad range of visual interests to match my musical ones. I could spend all day painting in Hopkins hall, visit with Grad students, and walk over to Larry’s in the evening, and on down to Crazy Momma’s at night. The eighties was full of experimentation, and Neo- expressionism was taking hold of me and a lot of my artist friends. My work from back then was very reflective of the times.
Q) Your works that really caught my eye are your paintings of scenes in and around Downtown Columbus. The angles from which they are painted are always very interesting, as they seem to be locations that offer a perspective outside of what you might usually observe. Can you tell us a bit about why you paint these types of scenes?
A) A lot of my approach to painting and composition is residual Neo-Ab-Ex type motivations, i.e., gut feelings, the immediate environment, or feelings, but tempered within the framework of images of the real world, and, by real, I mean the one I physically come into contact with. Not the Internet, the news, television, or imagination. I believe that there are endless reasons for an artist to create work right here at home, and would argue that it is their responsibility to at least do a little of that kind of thing. Communities like Columbus are struggling to compete with the Internet like David and Goliath, or John Henry and the steam shovel. Each citizen should do what he or she can to improve the community and foster its growth. If my paintings can inspire people to a higher appreciation, involvement, and loyalty for all things local, then I will feel like I have accomplished something important.
Q) I also noticed that quite a few of the paintings featured on your blog include the Smith Brothers Hardware Building. Does that building hold any special significance for you? Are there any other particular landmarks or places in Columbus that have a special meaning for you or your work?
A) I like the way cities take old, industrial and utilitarian structures and adapt them for other purposes. While I am very fond of ultra-modern architecture and hope to see a lot more of it springing up in central Ohio, I would like to see it along side the aforementioned type of structures. Too often preservation and renovation is cost-prohibitive, or, at least, that is the common excuse among developers. Smith Brothers is an excellent example of spending a bit more money to keep a structure rather and replace it and, by doing so, creating an icon for Columbus. I cannot begin to tell you the number of people that come up to me at openings and tell me about their grandparents that worked and met at Smith Brothers’, or their uncle, or husband. Also, buildings like that hearken back to a time when proletariat neighborhoods like Italian Village were filled with immigrant factory workers who would walk to factories in the morning, and back home at night when the whistles blew. This was a time when industry ruled the day, and Columbus was more than just banks and insurance.
I also like to paint the view of downtown from the southern edge of Goodale Park. This is what the residents of Flytown would have seen. Flytown was a neighborhood that was dug up to make way for the I670 interchange, and was a lower income working class neighborhood. I am not against gentrification, I just like to see our colorful heritage honored and preserved in some way.
Q) You’ve also completed several commissioned murals in and around Columbus. Can you tell us a bit about the process of completing a larger project like that?
A) It is almost more difficult to raise the money for a public work of art than it is to create one. I find that there is a lot of community interest for such projects, just not so much fiscally. It’s like chickens and eggs, but I believe that once there is a lot of it around, and people become acclimated and start to expect it of their environment, then it will become easier to get people to contribute. But, as long as you live in a culture that thinks a painting is something that is best done with a palette knife and costs $99 at a furniture store and is signed with a gold paint marker and you have a newspaper that speaks out openly about their opposition to a percent for art program, as well as a powerful and influential commercial developer (who shall remain nameless) who does the same even though he is a noted art collector himself, the educational, social and cultural VALUE of art will remain a hard sell to the general public.
Q) You’ve got a reception tomorrow for a new showing in Bexley, right? Can you give us some details on that for anyone who’d like to come check out your work?
A) This exhibit feature paintings by myself and two other painters, Joe Lombardo, and Perry Brown. Joe paints Columbus as he sees it with lush, juicy oil paint and warm colors and Perry, while usually a rural landscape painter, has turned to the urban environment for new inspiration. His paintings are of Central Park in New York. My paintings cover the gamut from happy, “Short-Northy” paintings, to sublime images of urban reality.
“The Urban Landscape”
runs from May 27 through July 5, 2009
Artists’ Reception May 29, 5-8 p.m.
Art Access Gallery
540 S. Drexel Ave., Bexley, OH 43209
614-338-8325
http://www.artaccessgallery.com
More information about Curtis can be found online at CurtisGoldstein.Blogspot.com.