Where are you from?

I grew up in New Mexico in my formative years. I kind of lived everywhere though. I went to 16 different schools before I graduated from high school. I did move around a lot. I have been in Miami for about eight years now.

What brought you to Miami?

Definitely the culture and the ocean. When I came to visit my parents, who live on the other coast of Florida, I came over to this side and just fell in love with the ocean. I actually lived in Coco Beach before I came here. I love to surf and they have good kite-surfing. In Miami not so much but I can go to California and surf. I go snorkeling every weekend cause I love the water here. It’s amazing. Growing up in the desert it’s is totally different. 

When did you start your career as an artist?

That’s always a hard question to answer. Generally, I have been painting ever since I can remember. Professionally, it has been about eleven years that I have been working on my art and doing contract work and painting for galleries. The last two years is when I really made the commitment to do it full time. 

How does your moving and traveling change or influence your art?

It definitely adds a lot of color. I always had really colorful work but here in Miami my work is almost neon, it is so colorful right now. I am completely influences by the colors here. I am just a very vibrant person as it is.

Your subjects are mostly women. Why?

My stuff with the ladies is definitely more popular. I really love doing portrait style work. I did photo-realism for a long time and I did a lot of black and white portraits of people. I also did black and white photography. I love drawing old people. I hate drawing kids. I cannot do it. Their heads are shaped weird. I am just not familiar with little children. I love those imperfections that make people so beautiful.

Do you base the characters on women you know?

Sometimes it’s people that I know and then a lot of times it is just on top of my head and just let it go.

Are the ones with the glasses based on you?

The ones with the glasses are based on me. Actually, I was listening to a lot of No Doubt, so there is a lot of Gwen Stefani in it but I also put me in it. I don’t really like doing self-portraits and adding myself into my artwork so it is more about hints. A little tattoo here, or the glasses there, or some kind of fashion element that I like.

You are very interested in fashion. Can you tell us more about how you incorporate that into your art?

For a long time I wanted to do fashion illustration. I am really good at drawing females. I love creating new outfits, especially accessories and headpieces. I make a lot of jewelry. I used to paint on pieces and make earrings. I really like making headdresses. It is my favorite thing. It is something I have been wanting to explore more now cause I haven’t done it in a long time. I spent a good four years making my own outfits. I used to be a party kid and did the whole dance lifestyle. I do not know what you call them here but in Colorado they used to call them “Candy-Stripers.” We would go to a party and get the party started by getting everybody to dance. We would go on the dance floor and get everyone excited. I did that a lot. I would make new outfits every weekend. A lot of people wanted to buy my stuff so I started making clothes for other people and started designing my own stuff. I haven’t done it in a while. My sewing machine is nicely tucked away. 

You have many Native American references in your work. Where does that influence come from?

There is a lot of Native American influence of course in New Mexico and I am also part Shawnee, which is actually from the Midwest. The Ohio basin. I have a little bit in me. I have done a lot of research into all the tribes of North America and also South America. I am into Asian tribes right now. They have these amazing headpieces that they wear. I really like history. I read up on Shawnee culture and I know pretty much everything about their history that there is to know. I read as many books as I could find. It is really beautiful how their cultures are so similar but so different at the same time. 

Do you keep the meaning behind different aspects you use in your work in mind?

I do. For example, some of the patterns that you find in tribal designs have specific meanings, like three solid triangles in a row can be clouds. When you have the different shapes and different line work and when I put it in my artwork I do it for a specific reason. Usually, I am trying to tell a story in a non-verbal way, using patterns and imagery, which is why I have been doing a lot of pattern work in my pieces recently.

What are you currently working on?

I am working on a bunch of pieces for a solo show this fall. It will be my first solo show in three years. I have not actually put together a body of work to show all on my own so it’s very nerve wrecking and I am very nervous to out my work out like that but I think it is a good, natural progression for an artist.

Have you decided on a theme for the show?

Yes. It is called “Inner Reflections,” which is based on one of my pieces of a girl that has a reflection of herself behind her. She is very peaceful and tranquil and then behind her is this angry person but its all rainbow. The light is coming out of her even though she is not expressing it. Above her is a bunch of elements from my past like I lizard that I had when I was a kid and my mom’s favorite flowers and my grandma always loved butterflies so I have butterflies on there. The date for the show is still kind of up in the air. It is either going to open on the second Saturday of October or November. Most likely it is going to be November at Unix Gallery in Wynwood.

You also often paint tigers. What’s the story behind the tiger?

I always had a really strong connection to really large cats. They are really smart. I do like small cats, too, but I am not as impressed with them as I am with large cats. Some can be so individual and others are extreme pack animals. Or they can be both. They are just very independent, which I think I vibe with.

Did you start with canvas or murals first?

Murals. I actually started painting murals with paint and then moved into acrylic. I did a lot of graffiti in high school. Once I decided to take a move in another direction I started doing my murals in spray paint. Now, I mix it up. I do paints and markers. I have been doing a lot of murals lately. That has been my bread and butter recently. I am doing one at the new Wynwood Brewery and the other one I have in progress right now is actually in Biscayne Park. The next one I will be working on is in West Palm. I am doing a collaboration with a couple of awesome Miami artists. Ruben Ubiera and Trek6 are also going to be on the mural in West Palm. In the near future I want to do a collaboration with Alex Yanes, who is a good friend mine. He is totally awesome. I cannot wait to do it. He is going to do his 3-D cut out stuff and I will paint around it. I am also going to do the costume shop that is right by the RC Cola Plant with my friend Grabs. He is in the graffiti crew FDC. He is amazing. He is totally cool.  He is Brazilian and a really great guy. Then I am doing the mural on the DOG building on Miami Ave. I will be doing that hopefully within the next two weeks, too. For that one I have a sketch I did a year ago. I always wanted to do it big on a wall. It is a wolf howling and out of his mouth comes a big rainbow towards the sky. I always envision sound as color. I always try to interpret what I see around me as a prism.

How important is public art to you?

I really have a thing for art in public spaces. And the one idea I have is to make a sculpture that is basically a solar powered charging station. You can put it in parks or school. It would have a turbine on top and solar panels, which I already have done all the research one. I already made the business plan. It would also have the charging station so people could charge their iPhones or whatever and chill out in the park and enjoy the beauty of nature and use a natural way to charge.

If you could pick any wall or building in the world, which wall would you love to paint?

That’s a good one. I would love to do something in Brazil. They have a lot of houses kind of stacked up on the hill. It’s the same in Colombia and Venezuela. I always wanted to go to one of those three countries and paint a giant piece stacked up on twenty houses. It would continue all the way up so if you are standing next to it you could only see some detail but if you go far away you can see the whole piece. There is one artist, Junior, he has been doing these huge portraits all around the world. He is one of my good friend’s friend. He moved to New York a couple of years ago and I think he had done something in Brazil that was like that. He started off doing eyes and little kids’ faces and he went to a couple of different countries and did giant wheat pastes of kids’ eyes across a couple of buildings. You can only see it from the air or from across the valley. It completely inspired me and took my mind to a different place that I can do something so large. It made me start thinking about small canvases and small walls and start doing giant pieces that can be more powerful and significant to people than just like one canvas. You can bring a place that is all slum to a place of beauty. Art really improves a community. Art heals people and people change the world. That’s really what I want to do. And, I would really love to do something on the Berlin Wall. I actually have a friend that just went there recently and she took a picture of a piece that kind of looked like something that would inspire me. I always wanted to do something there and now I am actually planning a trip next year to do something. I am part Czechoslovakian so I really want to do something in Prague. I will be doing a really cool thing in Greece next year. My friend’s whole family is from there and they have a house there in this little town. Beautiful, by the ocean. Her aunt is hiring me to paint her house here and then she is going to fly me out. All I want is a trip to Greece. There is four generations under one roof. I am going to paint this house that they built out of stone 400 years ago. Then I am taking a tour around Europe starting from Greece.

What is your biggest dream?

My biggest dream is to spend three years on the road, traveling and painting everywhere. I have spent a couple of years on the road just backpacking and hiking and I fell in love with that gypsy culture. That’s what I want to do. At least three years just on the road like a tour of everywhere I can go. Just do art to make my way to the next place.

Do you have a favorite band or musician?

I do. I love music. There is a couple. Beastie Boys. I never get tired of their music. I could put that stuff on repeat for the rest of my life. I listen when I paint. Also, Bonobo. He is a DJ and producer and he has a whole band. They play amazing music. Trip hop meets down tempo funk. It’s really beautiful.

How did you come by the name Kazilla?

When I do my art and pretty much everything else that I do, I do it super fast and with a lot of speed momentum. I feel like a tornado or whirlwind. My real name is Cassie. My friends started calling me Cas because of the Tasmanian Devil. I am a huge fan of old school monster flicks and Godzilla is one of my favorites from back in the day. I totally love all the old monster flicks. Godzilla was a character in a couple of the pieces that I did so my friends started calling me Kazilla.

You say your work is about the fundamentals of aesthetics and humanity. Could you elaborate please?

The idea is basically: Where do we come from? What are we doing? Where are we going? That is the very simplified version. I go at it through what I believe is something we all universally share, which is, quite often, food. For almost all of my career at this point it has all been food related, in one form or another. The new installation at the Bass Museum of Art is probably the farthest even though it still has a food reference. It refers to the eco system and some place that food comes from but not as directly as me giving somebody a piece of food in the past. Aesthetically it is very hard edged minimalist. The artist is removed but there is always my hand in there in some kind of twist in one form or another.

How do you deal with the decomposition aspect of food materials?

I make a lot of sculptures that are functional. That is the more permanent part. I have done things that leave a mark or a stain. It is a spin-of or sometimes it is a byproduct. I have done all these barbeque sculptures and I ended up doing these barbeque drawings. My studio used to have an alley and I used to barbeque out there and it started making a stain on the wall. This nice fade of smoke on the wall. So I thought what if I put a piece of paper there? I refined that after a few trials and errors and I ended up with something I call “smoke drawing.” It is a record of the barbeque, of the process. It is always either media driven or process driven to some degree.

Could you tell us about your public art project for the Bass Museum?

It is an installation that consists of eight paintings and 700 hand-tied fishing flies, which mimic and also represent the little bait fish that live in Biscayne Bay. The paintings are of the grass flats of Biscayne Bay that have damaged areas where boats have carelessly driven across. When they drive across it the propellers just destroy everything. It literally has to be put back together by hand. It needs the certain microorganisms in the sand to grow and if they are not there then the grass just won’t grow back.

Aren’t there regulations against that?

There are tons. If you get caught it costs thousands of dollars.  They fine you by how many feet you made. There are markers. Some people don’t know which is scary. You don’t need to have any kind of licensing to drive a boat. You do not need to have a driver’s license in Florida. It is a free for all. So this new installation is the most ecological that I have done. All the pieces are super multi-faceted even though they are very clean, precise and conceptual. They always encompass as many things and have as many facets as possible.

Would you say aesthetics is not your primary concern?

It is. I cannot get away from it. I went to art school and I appreciate well crafted beautiful things so I strive to create well crafted pieces. I make a lot of works that fail in the studio, technically, made out of weird organic materials. I do not know it until I try it.

What are some of the materials you tried and that did not work?

Spirulina was definitely one of them. The algae they put in protein shakes and vitamins. It is really interesting. It almost has a double helix. Spirals. It is a super food and it has all these great nutritional aspects to it and it grows really easy. People can farm it. I did these works on paper and I was mixing it with alcohol and got a beautiful stain on the paper. Just pour in on a paper and let it do its own little thing. The color, the pigment of the algae would move so there would be a faint stain and when I turned the paper over the color would be on the other side. It was moving back and forth through the paper. The first little hint of sunlight and it disappeared. It is not a very dramatic failure but a frustrating one.

Did you have dramatic failures with other organic materials before?

Yes, using chocolate powder. Everything wanted to eat it. It attracted roaches. Pure wine pigment is another one I found. It is a natural dye and also a vitamin supplement. You know it is considered THE antioxidant. The roaches loved it. I was doing drawings and leave and come back and they were eating away on the paper. My studio used to be un-air-conditioned and basically borderline open to the outside. I am always concerned about longevity.

What are some of the forthcoming projects you are planning or working on now?

I want to re-explore fish prints that I have done. It is sort of a continuation of the Biscayne Bay stuff. It was even a thought to incorporate a fish from Biscayne Bay into some of the fish prints that I have done. I had a solo show last year that showed a bunch of them and I had some commissions right before that. They are very simple, one fish, one piece of paper. I want to push it and get more abstract and do multiple prints and see where I can take it beyond just “this is a fish.”

Are you also working towards another exhibition?

Not at the moment, no. I wanted to be in this show but got shut out because I was the wrong nationality. The piece was really interesting and I will make the piece regardless. It’s a piece about bacalao, which is salt-dried cod fish, which basically allowed the colonization of the world. The project was about the ties between the Caribbean and Spain. Great piece. The piece consists of nine vessels filled with salt and each containing a cured fish with the little tail sticking out. It is a drawing at this point. The vessels will be made out of tropical hardwood and the salt will be from the Atlantic Ocean which is the body that joins these two areas of the world.

Are you actually from Miami?

Yes. I am third generation on one side of my family and second on the other.

What do you love about Miami?

The water. Everything that’s here. For me it has always worked out. It fits my lifestyle. New York has never been that appealing as a place to permanently be. I love to visit it. I can have an amazing quality of life here and work a normal job. We bought a house and have a boat. It is great. It fits me.

What do you think about the progress of the art scene here in Miami?

It is a mixed blessing. There are both, positive and negative aspects about it. I guess it generally is more good than bad. I have been hanging out in Wynwood since Locust Projects first opened up and I met Dorsch when he bought the building for his gallery. That was the two things that were here. That, and a bunch of sketchy people. We had a studio in the Design District for seven years I shared with five other guys. We saw the Design District change a lot. Now you have high design but no cutting-edge contemporary art. It has faded away compared to what it used to be.

What is the market like in Miami? Are there enough collectors and buyers to sustain it?

There is. We have several of the top 100 collections in the world here. Amazing. I work for Museovault so I see and handle a lot of the collections in town, for the institutions and private. There are definitely people who support the Miami artists a lot. There is Rosa De La Cruz, a tremendous supporter and almost a mentor in some ways. When I was finishing up art school and starting my career she bought several pieces of mine and sent me off to see art in different places and shared a lot of knowledge. Beyond my college classroom and studio practice I had no idea what the art world was really about. I got to see a little bit of it.

What originally started your interest in food?

I always cooked and ate. As a kid I would watch cartoons and cooking shows. The serious focus on it, taking it to another level, happened in college. I got into art school, into New World, as a ceramics major. I knew nothing of art history, nothing of contemporary art. I got in there and got exposed to all this stuff and thought, what am I going to do? Also at the same time I started to get really interested in food and it kind of morphed together. Different cooking methods have always been an interest.

What are some of the ingredients that you have never experimented with from an art perspective but you definitely still want to try?

The odder things. I have never explored insects or the indigenous pre-Colombian South American stuff. It has been 14 years of exploring food. I have done potatoes. I have done grain. I have done all kind of different wine stuff. I have done different spices like the peppercorn piece that is currently at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. I have done stuff with saffron. Salt is one, like in the bacalao piece, I still want to do. I have never really produced a series of works with salt. I tried to make salt-crystal curtains but it did not work.

When last did you do ceramics?

It has probably been four years. The pieces that I made were small sculptures. They are these cutesy bulbous formations based on yeast. There are different strains that make more carbon dioxide and other ones that make more ethanol. It is really interesting. It is the perfect model for hedonism. These little creatures eat up all the foods first that is available to them, which is glucose and then their byproduct is carbon dioxide and ethanol. Ethanol is poisonous to any and all living things. In enough concentration it will kill a plant, it will kill us. And, it kills the yeast.  So the yeasts goes and goes and the byproduct is that they create a toxic environment.

Is all your work based on scientific research?

These are things I find in research and it is always well founded. I don’t make up a lot.

Is it relevant to you whether people who engage with you work understand the processes and details of your work?

It is a bonus. I try to balance out the aesthetics and the conceptual aspect so you get something no matter what.

Do you often have conversations about your work and about your audience’s experience with your work?

Yes. It is not easy. There is a door or a small window but there isn’t a neon “open” sign per se. There is not a “keep out” sign.

Please tell us more about the peppercorn piece you mentioned

This piece is simply about black peppercorns and minimalist art. However, the history of black peppercorns is anything but simple as is the conceptual foundation of minimalist art. Peppercorns are one of most used spices in the world today. They have been a desired commodity for a thousand years or so. Notable examples include the spice trade from India and China as well as the later westward exploration by Christopher Columbus and other explorers looking for wealth and the later pillaging of the British East Indian Trading Company. I am drawing lines between current desired commodities like fossil fuels and our thirst for them and our forefather’s thirst for spice. I have found myself asking, why haven’t we learned from them and are just repeating history again and again? And then we can start to explore the twist on formal aesthetic concerns I expand upon with the smell, texture and physical interaction of a work of art. This piece draws from floor works of Carl Andre and earth works of Robert Smitherson adding my own conceptual concerns. The first time I showed “Untitled (Black Pepper Corns)” it was at a gallery called Invisible Exports. It is a small alternative gallery in New York.  There was literally a foot and a half on each side that you could walk around so it was a long narrow space. And people still didn’t want to walk on it. At the end of the night people were playing with it. People were having fun with it. It is replenishable. It is along the lines of Felix Gonzales Torres’ work in some way. The concept is what it is. My hand is not that important in the fabrication. It is a circle. You just put it in a circle and that’s it. It is not a special artist circle. A circle is a circle.

Meet the Monotype

September 28, 2013

10:00AM - 4:00 PM 
INSTRUCTOR: CHERYL FINFROCK

Monoprinting is a painterly, expressive, and instantly gratifying printing technique where each impression is unique. This versatile method is a great way to develop images, add color to already printed works and an easy introduction to some of the basic concepts of printmaking, such as the mirror effect and basic press operation. This class is suitable for all levels of experience.

Tuition: $150
Maximum Enrollment: 6

Cheryl Finfrock is currently represented by Koelsch Gallery in Houston. Her exhibition history includes NYC, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. She enjoyed a solo monotype exhibit at Lessedra Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria as well. Her current painting series, Secret Places, is a snapshot of recalled experiences – exploring the buried treasures of memory brought to life through human experience. Secret Places explores the cult of place, brought to life through recollected experience. 

REGISTER NOW:  http://www.flatbedpress.com

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