February 10–March 13 . 2011

Casey PornWild at Heart

For the Wild: A conversation with Casey Porn by Greg Lindquist

Companion animals are extensions of our humanness. Pets accompany us in our daily activities, mirror our emotions and mannerisms, and share in how we experience and navigate the world. In them, we see ourselves. Dogs in particular are central to Casey Porn’s life and the subjects of her witty, imaginative, and ex-quisitely crafted paintings. Porn was a teenager when she adopted her own first dog, Breenle, and has drawn her ever since she was a puppy. They have grown together. As Porn has continued to depict her dogs in her paintings, their fictional narratives and identities have become more elaborate and farther reaching as Porn’s relationship to them and her understanding of their cultural identity has developed. Porn has observed mortality and a wildness reemerge in Breenle’s old age. By painting dogs as if human, she has sought a larger cultural under-standing of our relationship to domesticated animals and our own socialization and assimilation of indigenous cultures. I visited Porn’s studio in Raleigh, North Carolina and we discussed her dogs, influences and ideas behind her work.

GL: Can you remind me of the names of your dogs and their breeds? Do you think there is any relationship between the dogs’ names and the portraits’ titles that evoke various aspects of their personality, real or imagined?

CP: As my pets age before my eyes, I’m starting to see their inevitable mortality. I often think about how they’d want to be remembered, or how I want people to remember them. Portraiture is an instantly engaging way to capture someone’s perceived living essence. My dogs are: Breenle “T-Horse” age 13, a Chihuahua; Augie age 8, a Schipperke/Terrier mix; Pico “Silkington” age 4, a Tibetan spaniel mix. My dogs have a million nicknames, and any of these names can easily slip into the name of a portrait if I have used their likeness. For instance, Sitting Bull (2011) is a portrait of Augie sitting down, wearing a buffalo horn headdress. One of his nicknames is “Bull and Bear” because he looks like a bull in the body and a bear in the face. We also often refer to Augie as “The Shaman” because I think he has wisdom beyond comprehension in his tiny eyes (by definition, a shaman is an intermediary between the human world and the spirit worlds). In history, the real Sitting Bull was a Sioux holy man who was famous for his role in the vic-tory at The Battle of Little Bighorn. Whether it’s a real or imagined is debatable, but to me, Augie’s personality is very similar to Sitting Bull’s.

GL: How do you see this body of work relate to your previous, which referred more directly to pop culture through visual puns, titles, and the absurdly surreal hybrid animals?

Casey PornWild at Heart

Chuck Norris, 2009, india ink and acrylic on panel, 8 x 8”

CP: I think it’s an evolution of that work. These pieces stem from a more personal place. Many of them borrow a likeness and characteristics from my own fleet of aging dogs. I’ve painted bears before, I’ll paint them again, but I’ve never met one, never watched it turn gray and go senile. I have a real relationship and history with these subjects. There are still a lot of similarities to the old work. The visual puns are still there. Some of them may not be as broadly relate-able though, because they come from a more intimate place than the cover of OK magazine. GL: When I look at your spray paint and acrylic backgrounds, I see the bling of Kehinde Wiley’s baroque portraits and wild-style of Ryan McGinness’ logos. What inspires the background patterning in your paintings? Do you look at graf-fiti culture?

CP: I usually think of colors first, and patterns second. In the case of the por-traits, I wanted to reference a traditional portrait that is often painted or photo-graphed in a domestic setting. I initially started with simplified graphic versions of baroque wallpapers to convey this. Inspiration from graffiti culture is certainly there. I like how the boldness and simplicity of some forms of graffiti can have such a strong visual impact without being too complicated.

GL: Your paintings are intricate and carefully crafted. Though they remove the presence of your touch, they are often scaled to the size of your hand. Do you see any connection between the intimate scale in most of your paintings and the miniature size of your dogs?

CP: I started working small because I was painting in a very small space. I liked how each piece was lovingly painted with tiny lines. It was like each one was a little treasure. They didn’t command anybody’s visual landscape, but would hopefully provide an intimate moment with the people who took the time to see

them. It’s funny, because that’s how my dogs are to me. These pieces are bigger than I normally make, and the whole experience of painting one has changed. Hopefully, the scale change will make it easier to engage and empathize with the beast.

GL: I’m curious about the cultures of the various clothing used to dress the dogs. What attracts you to these specific cultures and how much does the specificity of the cultures matter in the final paintings as they are melded with pop culture and your graphic style?

CP: For these particular portraits, I looked at various native and indigenous cul-tures because their lifestyles and actions are often misunderstood by Western-ized civilization. These cultures have rejected Western influence to retain their cultural identity and history. The pets we’ve domesticated are biologically in-clined to live as pack dogs, not lap dogs. Humans have bred them to be compan-ions of convenience. The clothing I choose is a very loose nod to the ceremonial dress of tribal leaders who rejected assimilation. They had their portraits taken to preserve their legacy. As an animal’s body ages, so does its dignity. The dress dictates how its subject will be remembered. I incorporate pop culture a lot be-cause that is my world. It’s something I can’t escape and I don’t really try to. I reference actual and current pop culture personalities to make sure people know that I don’t take the work as seriously as it may come off. In Jon Breenet Ramsey (2011), I’m recalling a horrible crime that was highly sensationalized by the media. I’m not saying a murdered child beauty queen and a taxidermied animal trophy are equally unspeakable, but there are some parallels. Both are stories of beautiful creatures who suffered premature losses of life.

Greg Lindquist is a North Carolina-born, New York-based artist and writer. He con-tributes regularly to artcritical.com, ARTnews, Beautiful/Decay, The Brooklyn Rail.

Silkington, 2008, india ink and acrylic on panel, 8 x 10”

Buck Mild, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 36 x 24”

Richard Stabone, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 24 x 18”

Breenie Warrior Princess, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 24 x 24”

JonBreenet Ramsey, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 24 x 24”

Sitting Bull, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 36 x 24”

NeckrOphelia, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 36 x 24”

Kenny Loggins, 2009, india ink and acrylic on panel, 10 x 8”

Chirppendale, 2009, india ink and acrylic on panel, 8 x 8”White Meat, 2008, india ink and acrylic on panel, 8 x 8”

Born to be Wild, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 24 x 6”

About Casey Porn

Casey Porn is a self proclaimed “Small Dog Enthusiast”…painting and obsess-ing over carry-able canines since her first close encounter with a pink eyed jack russel terrier in the mid 1990’s. Her interests include, but are not limited to: the secret lives of animals, chihuahua culture, big eyed figurines, baby deer, saggy nipples, space travel, bananas, and Japan. These things may or may not influ-ence her work.

Casey studied drawing and painting at North Carolina State University School of Design from 1997-2001, graduating with a Bachelors of Art and Design. She currently lives and works in Raleigh, NC.

CHRISTINA RAY is an innovative gallery and creative catalyst in New York whose mission, grounded by the concept of psychogeography, is to discover and present the most important contemporary artwork exploring the relationship between people and places.

Phishing For Compliments, 2009, india ink and acrylic on panel, 17 x 23”

Image on front: Trophy Wife, 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 36 x 24”Image on back:A Horse of a Girl (detail), 2011, india ink and acrylic on panel, 24 x 18”

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