Gary Emrich: Part Two

Continuing last month’s interview with Denver-based media artist Gary Emrich …

RJ: What do you consider your first significant show?

GE: I don’t think I appreciated the immensity of it at the time, but when the Denver Art Museum bought Spinach Pasta and showed it in the Ponti Building in 1980, that was pretty cool. Color Photographs from the Collection (1980) included a photograph of mine that Dianne Vanderlip bought out of Ken Peterson’s Multiple Exposure show at the 15th Street Gallery in 1980. No one has seen it since 1980, but I know it’s in the collection, as is another large liquid light grid piece that Dianne bought in 1983. Showing Gray Zone in the Biennial at the museum in 1983 was a really significant thing for me.

RJ:  What has been your experience with regional galleries?

GE: I’d been showing at 2C and Spark (both collectives) and Sebastian-Moore downtown. John Grant was definitely a major player in photo, but I never really wanted to show in a photo gallery. I curated the first video art show in Denver at Sebastian-Moore. That was about 1983. I showed a Baldessari, Michael Smith, couple of friends from Chicago, Tony Oursler—he’d come to Chicago for a semester in the video program. And then in 1985 a really important Denver sculptor Brian Dreith and I did Transvision, the first big video installation at the Arvada Center. [see Part One for images.]

Gary Emrich: Gray Zone (video still).

Gary Emrich: Gray Zone (video still).

GE: There used to be a gallery in the Ponti Building called The Close Range Gallery, and it was made for regional artists. It had a show called First Sightings that I was in, in 1991, and a show called Egypt of the Mind in 1998, put together by Jane Fudge. Jane was very supportive of me. In 1989 I started showing at Robischon. The first show I had there was Fabricated and Photographed. They were down on 17th & Downing at the time. The remarkable thing about Jim and Jennifer was they let me do stuff they knew nobody was going to buy. I did a video installation there called Image Conscious (1998). I showed them some concept materials, but by the time I got it up it had a video with this big hunking projector, had John Elway in it—it was really amazing they let me do that.

RJ:  How big a role does contemporary art theory play in conceiving your work?

GE:  I’m a big fan of going to hear artists talk about their work. I think it’s just the greatest thing you can do. Helps you understand your work and puts it in perspective, so I’ve always liked those sort of things. The book of Nathan Lyons’ that people talk about is Notations in Passing. His interest in photography was about sequencing, how multiple images put in the right order tell a visual story. More than one individual picture being important it’s about an arrangement of pictures. And so many of us teach in that way—how this picture informs this one informs this one; you’re not trying to get the best picture, you’re trying to get a bunch of good ones.

Gary Emrich: Above: Firewater. installation photo showing (l-r) Cowboy with Deep Rock and Marshall with Refreshe Spring. Below, L-R: Lawyer with Ice Mountain; Molly Brown with Arrowhead; Photographer with Ozarka Spring; Highwayman with Evian.

RJ:  Let’s talk about current work. All Consumed (ongoing) concerns water, which is a massively important issue in the West.

GE: My interest in water comes from being a Coloradan and knowing that we are so vital for providing water for everyone in the West. How water rights are bought and sold is a thing of real political interest to me, and it’s in a lot of work that I’ve done. I did a body of work called Firewater before All Consumed where I used bottled water labels and these kitschy cliché liquor decanters of western tropes: The Cowboy, The Prospector, that sort of thing. And then I did a video in ‘92 that I really like called Great Western Water Trick. As more people live in the West and with climate change, water’s going to be even more of a commodity.

I see a time in which water is bought and sold literally as a commodity, not just the rights. So my original concern was about the value of water. Then, when I combined the plastic blister packs that hold the bottles, I realized that I was taking those first two things that we throw away, the packaging, and by doing that I could talk about how this plastic world, dealing with water, is just ridiculous. I mean, we do fifty billion bottles of water a year in this country.

RJ:  Unbelievable.

GE: Right now I’m trying to figure out this other body of work. I acquired 10,000 photographs from a newspaper from the twenties through the sixties. I got them twenty-five years ago. A lot of people have used found photos, and of course I’m trying to find a way to use them in ways that nobody else has. I went through and sorted them all into categories once years ago. There’s a lot of crime, a lot of sports and people in uniforms and that kind of thing.

RJ:   It sounds like a Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel project.

GE: Which was another thing that I was totally blown away by. When I saw Evidence I knew exactly what they were doing and I totally loved it. Actually, I was in San Francisco in 1978 when they had their show in some museum. And that was one of the first photo books I bought.

RJ:  Evidence brings to mind the emphasis on conceptual thinking you experienced in Chicago. For instance, you’ve mentioned perspective during this interview, which is something you’ve always employed to great effect.

GE:  You had asked about Paul Berger earlier. He made these wonderful photographs in mathematic classrooms of the chalk boards filled with formulas. They were just marks and the images were completely flat. I really responded to them because of their absolute flatness. Whether I have photographed off an old black and white TV which I did for years or arranged things and then photographed them, I am most comfortable with denying three-point perspective. I usually achieve this by photographing straight down. Even when I was photographing on the street I would find myself getting on top of parking garages and photographing down. I think there's some logic in that.

Gary Emrich: Crisis Management, ca. 1994. Photo emulsion on flagstone.

RJ:       And what about materials? You've worked with so many kinds during your career.

GE:      One thing I am very interested in is process. How the materials I chose inform the artwork. I usually come up with an idea or concept and think, "what materials should I use to resolve this?"

RJ:       Which brings me back to Egypt of the Mind at the DAM. Jane Fudge, the show’s curator, described your work in the show as, “Egyptian photographic images derived from that most elusive and often vexing art form video.” That’s quite intriguing. [1]

GE:       So, the work of mine in that exhibition was liquid photo emulsion on flagstone—they were Egyptian hieroglyphic pieces that I had recorded video of at a show about hieroglyphs, and then rephotographed and put back on stone. It was a classic trompe l’oeil thing. It was a classic trompe l’oeil thing. But even at that time I was torn, because I thought I was appropriating somebody else’s culture. I used a lot of Greek and Roman imagery too, because I felt like that was my culture, whereas Egypt really wasn’t.

RJ         From looking at your web site, this was part of a bigger series exploring how materials were put together.

GE:      In the end, I do have one constant in my work; I've always made pictures of other pictures.
I like taking objects, materials, and pictures out of context and putting them in my own narrative. It has been the one constant in my work for forty years.

END

Interview recorded during April 2017 & February 2021. Transcript edited in July 2021.

[1] Jane Fudge, catalog essay for “Egypt of the Mind,” at the Close Range Gallery, Denver Art Museum, April 25–September 27, 1998.

The Colorado Photo History blog is the online presence for “Outside Influence,” a book project by Rupert Jenkins. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion for future posts, and visit #Colorado Photo History on Instagram and Facebook.

@coloradophotohistory. #coloradophotohistory #outsideinfluence #emrich @garyemrich #newterritory #videoart #apollo #allconsumed #denverartmuseum @robischongallery

Gary Emrich: Part One

Gary Emrich is a Denver-based media artist who uses photography in various contexts: these include original and appropriated imagery, color prints, single-channel video, and multi-media installation. His CV is substantial and progresses from the late-seventies to the present day with Beatle-like intentionality, from analog to digital, print to video, neighborhood art space to prominent museum, document to concept.

The subject of land use and water distribution in the West occupies much of his work, as do various interpretations of exploration suggestive of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny—serious subjects that he often leavens with humor, vibrant color, and exhilarating energy.

Gary Emrich: So Many Windmills, 2020. (Video still)

To that effect, one short video titled So Many Windmills portrays an athletic woman trying again and again to mount a spinning chair that might or might not be attached to a fairground ride. A staccato jazz soundtrack drives the dizzying sequence, which resolves into a momentary image of masked people—an image that, given our time, conjures thoughts of the Covid pandemic. (The piece will be shown at Robischon Gallery in Denver in September.)

Similar moments of resolution, in which clarity emerges from confusion, recur throughout Emrich’s oeuvre. In Dibs, the third of a series about the Apollo space program, footage from the moon is accompanied by a distorted soundtrack through which the words “The flag is down” are momentarily heard. Incidental references like this inspire contemporary associations—for instance, as I write this, my mind travels to the chaotic retreat of US forces from Afghanistan and the Kabul airport.

Gary Emrich: Spinach Pasta Throughout Central America, 1980

As with all the artists I’ve spoken with for this project, talking with Gary in depth and studying his artwork has been an education not just in Colorado’s photo history, but also in the development of contemporary photographic practice and theory. Discovering our mutual taste for a good huevos rancheros has only added to the pleasure of our conversations. As usual, I began by asking about his background.

“My father was in the film industry. I was generally interested in film and was the son who was most engaged in it. I was also the guy in the family who had the cameras, who took the pictures, and recorded things. I remember my older brother in the seventies was like ‘why do you keep doing that?’ and now of course they are so happy I did.

“I graduated from CU Boulder in 1977 with a BA in Political Science. As a junior I was an exchange student in England, at the University of Lancaster. That was a changing period in my life. I visited museums, looked at art more, and I took a lot of photographs that I thought were pretty good.

Gary Emrich: Map 9, 1980

“When I came back to CU for my senior year—my final semester, Spring 1977—I took basic photo from Sandy Hume. Sandy was an adjunct teacher there. Being in Sandy’s class changed everything. I built a darkroom in my parents’ basement, and I talked with Sandy and Gary Metz. They said “Well, you’re living in Denver so you should take a class from Barbara Houghton.” That was in the fall of ’77. It was actually during the class I took from Barbara that I was introduced to conceptual thinking in photography. She showed Robert Heinecken, John Pfahl, Eileen Cowin, JoAnn Callis, Duane Michals, and especially Robert Cumming. This work just blew me away. These were photographers who actively engaged in creating their subject matter that they photographed; who told stories and talked about the media and politics in their work. I knew this was the area that I wanted to pursue.

“In those days Colorado Mountain College in Breckenridge (CMC) had a huge photo program. Mark Klett was there, Ellen Manchester, Kenda North, and I really tried to worm my way in with those people. I was seen as somebody who was really serious. CMC used to have these July Fourth symposiums, really interesting. Harry Callahan was there, Nathan Lyons, all these people. My first workshop was with Linda Connor. She was making these contact prints with her soft focus 8 x 10 view camera, and I was very interested in her work. That would have been 1978.

Gary Emrich: Gray Zone, 1982 (video still)

Gary Emrich: Gray Zone, 1982 (video still)

“I got into a residency at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho and learned color from Mark Klett. That was in the spring of 1979. One day I just started laying stuff out in the landscape and photographing it. I had bought my first 4 x 5 camera, a Graflex Crown Speed Graphic. I remember there were these fall leaves on the ground; I’d got some spaghetti and I laid it out in a grid and photographed it, and all of a sudden it started to click to me that I was supposed to actively construct the things and photograph them. And so I made those first map pictures, which became Spinach Pasta Throughout Central America, when I was living in Sun Valley, Idaho.

I was in Idaho for three months then came home and started to apply for graduate schools. I interviewed to get into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I remember Alex Sweetman was one of the people who looked at my portfolio and I was amazed because I knew that he was the Walker Evans scholar, and then I met Ken Josephson. I went to Chicago in 1980.

By the time I graduated from Chicago I was definitely 50/50 video and photo. I was really lucky to go there. There was equipment and an editing suite; it was very cool to be able to do that. I didn’t have a job and the Colorado Historical Society [now History Colorado] amazingly enough called me and invited me to Denver to work in the photo area. I worked there and had a couple of teaching jobs. I taught video for Barbara at Metro, I taught at UC Denver, a semester at CU Boulder in video, and tried to survive. Video art was accepted and folded into the program. I used to tell students that when you make stuff—and you’re always making stuff and thinking the next stuff will be better—you never really appreciate how important the moment is until later.

In 1985 a really important Denver sculptor Brian Dreith and I did Transvision, the first big video installation at the Arvada Center (above). That was a good show. We got a grant from the Colorado Council of the Arts and a matching grant, so we had about $5,000. We bought a 1963 Buick Wildcat that we had restored; put the front part on this showroom floor and the shitty back part on the concrete floor. Then we did a neon version of the car, like it was moving. That was the first time anyone had shown video as a sculptural thing. We spent so much of our own money it was just ridiculous.

End of Part One. In Part Two, Gary discusses working in the film industry, exhibiting with Robischon Gallery and the Denver Art Museum, and creating his ongoing series about the commodification of water, All Consumed.

Captions above: Clockwise L-R: After the Order, 1981; Untitled (trash can), 1981; Knot and Tube, nd; Light bulb with Clamp, nd; School Chair, nd; Water/Blue Flame, nd; The Repentent Mary Magdalene, 1985; Trust in the Lord (Knife and Typewriter), nd.

The Colorado Photo History blog is the online presence for “Outside Influence,” a book project by Rupert Jenkins. As always, please leave a comment or a suggestion for future posts, and visit #Colorado Photo History on Instagram and Facebook.

@coloradophotohistory. #coloradophotohistory #outsideinfluence #emrich #garyemrich #newterritory #videoart #apollo #allconsumed #denverartmuseum #robischongallery #barbarahoughton