The following is a transcript of an 'Artists Talk', featuring Charles Benefiel, Hiroyuki Doi and Chris Hipkiss, which took place on the 9 November 2005 at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. Due to the time necessary for transcription, only Hipkiss' answers are reproduced here, but it is hoped that the other two artists may contribute their own parts in future.

Diane Schlesinger: ...we're really excited to have all of you here. My name is Diane Schlesinger, and as Director of the Education Department for the American Folk Art Museum, it's my pleasure to welcome you all to the Artists Talk: Obsessive Drawings. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to the artists who have joined us here tonight: Charles Benefiel, Hiroyuki Doi and his interpreter, Yoshiko Doi, and finally Chris Hipkiss [applause]. And they come from Pennsylvania, Japan and France respectively to be with us here tonight. Their work is exciting and vibrant and engaging and challenging and entertaining and are on our second floor. This is a show called Obsessive Drawings, curated by Brooke Anderson, who will be moderating tonight's panel and Brooke is the director of the museum contemporary sector and the curator of this exhibition and of many shows for the contemporary sector. This program is also being taped tonight by National Public Radio and it's for use in a possible broadcast, so be on your best behavior and please join me in welcoming all of the artists and Brooke Anderson [applause].

Brooke Anderson: So when I go like this we're all going to laugh, right? [audience laughter] We're delighted to have all three of you here in New York. It is a privilege to have you with us as well tonight. I thought it would be necessary before we get into a dialogue with our three artists to revisit the artwork or some of the artwork upstairs. Chris, Hiroyuki and Charles share the exhibition Obsessive Drawings with two artists who couldn't be with us tonight, Eugene Andolsek and Martin Thompson, and I just want to acknowledge the two of them and the contributions that they have made to this project. I feel like since the show opened a couple of months ago now that I have said and talked about the show a lot and there have been lots of words about the exhibition and we're going to have many words from the artists this evening. So what I would like to do first for a few minutes is look at the work with Charles' music playing and just have you really look at the work, and see the work without any distractions from the curator. I think that I'm inspired by this idea just for a few minutes by Zadie Smith's On Beauty, and I don't know if anybody yet has been able to read her new novel, but an art historian is a central character and my idea to just show the slides with music really was inspired by the very moving ending from that phenomenal novel On Beauty and I highly recommend it. It will make you weep. So, the music... [Charles Benefiel's music plays over slides]

So now let's hear from the artists. What we're going to do with the panel is a pretty standard procedure. The education department has come up with a couple of questions for the artists. I'm going to begin the evening by talking to them with those questions and then we'll open it up to the audience because I'm sure that you have lots of things on your mind as well. So Hiroyuki, let's start with you. I wonder if you can talk about the tools and materials and details that you use to create your work?

[Hiroyuki Doi: ...]

BA: Chris would you take the mic...

Chris Hipkiss: There's two ways to answer, really. I can say the types of things that I use. I use 3B pencils, hundreds of them… [produces small paintbrush] that's my favorite brush for the ink. In fact, I only use one…

BA: Can you hold the mic a little closer?

CH: Is that better? That's broken because it fits in my box properly. I only use one rubber, for special effects. Sorry - an eraser… [audience laughter]

BA: Didn't need a laugh monitor there!

CH: That's my most important thing [produces small red plastic tube]: a holder. When the pencil ends you can stick it in this. But really my major -and I always use acid free paper, that's natural. That's virtually all I use, and a knife, a blade- really my major tool is the fact that it's the environment that I work in. Most artists, or the idea that most artists work alone in a studio or a space where they can see the things that they need to see. I work basically in a living room with my partner, my wife Alpha Mason, who sadly can't be with us tonight. It's that that makes me draw rather than the tools or utensils I use because I need constantly the creative idea of being with someone for many years in the same room. I need the television, I need the animals, I need the cats. We even eat at the same table. It's that that makes me draw, makes it possible for me to work so many long hours, not necessarily my equipment.

BA: Chris, what is Alpha doing whilst you're drawing?

CH: She's a writer so it's not like an artists' studio so much. It's literally my living room. If I don't have that I don't draw, except to say if I go on travels or train journeys then I can do a small picture. I can't do a large picture of course. I don't have the space. It's strange, you know; if she's not there I would not draw. She's my greatest tool.

BA: Yeah, it's thought too that you occasionally use the silver ink...

CH: Sorry, yeah...

BA: OK, just wondering… [audience laughter]

CH: It has to be French for some reason. Pencils have to be Staedtler, German, because English ones are rubbish. So are French ones. Rubber -eraser- Staedtler again. Apart from that I don't use any... that's the tools that I use.

BA: and Charles, you want to talk about your materials...

[Charles Benefiel: Yeah...]

BA: Let's go with that idea a little bit. Chris maybe you could tell us why you draw… Actually, I just want to let everyone know, it might interest you to know that this is a first time experience for all three of our artists: they've never participated in an artists panel before. So be nice! [audience laughter]

CH: Was that the question: why I draw?

BA: Yes, why do you draw?

CH: I think I've always drawn since I was two. A little anecdote: when I was two, I went to bed, and I had a cushion. I filled the whole cushion with spiders. All had eight legs, because even in those days I was interested in animals. And the whole pillow… Shame I never kept it actually; one of my better works [audience laughter]. The whole pillow was full. I used a biro…

BA: You used what?

CH: A biro.... When I woke up, my mum said, “What the hell have you done,” and I said, “ My pen slipped” [audience laughter]. It was something that I do actually remember; either that or I made it up. I've always drawn but, basically, I think when my wife -she used to work up at the city- and when she gave up her job… and stayed at home much more… that was when I really changed. Before then, it was always a struggle to draw, a bit like Charles in a way with that sort of having a compulsion to do it. For me, I was never really getting anywhere every time. I think it was when I was in a room alone, each picture took me months and months to finish and they weren't very good. And its basically since my wife stayed at home more that that compulsion, that need to draw came into light and ever since then it's been very easy for me to draw. It also coincides with a trip to Paris and I had a pad, a piece of paper and pencil and I just felt I was just so fed up doing these things that didn't mean much, so I thought I'd just doodle. As far as I'm concerned, that was the first proper work I'd done; on a tourist boat on the Seine. And that's what really was the start of my career as an artist.

BA: And your pen's been slipping ever since! [audience laughter] So maybe you could also address the other question: Is there something that you are working on now that you see as distinct from what's on view upstairs?

CH: Yeah, that picture was done in 1994. It took two and a half years; a bit of a pain [audience laughter]. I took a week off to do the globe. I'm sure you've seen it, it's got a very large globe on it. I took a week off work just to purely do that globe, because it was one of the last things to do. I do work different… I'm more into landscape now. I sometimes consider myself a folk artist; an attraction to the landscape that's the type of thing that I'm getting into more now rather than people orientated work, but I still like to do pictures as big.

BA: You still like to do pictures that are as big as that one?

CH: Well, the picture upstairs was actually… I did intend it to be three times bigger. I laid it all out in the village hall and realized “Hang on a sec, I'll just keep it that size” [audience laughter]. I threw away the other pieces. A couple of years ago I started a picture twice the size, and again I laid it out, did various pieces to it but I gave up. There just wasn't time, I suppose. Too much...

BA: You know, thinking of that large drawing and the technique for a moment. Several of our docents have wondered if the element in your large drawing which looks like charcoal and feels like smoke coming out of the smokestacks, it was wondered if that was also burning. Perhaps a kind of burning from a flame or charcoal or a combination of...

CH: It's just charcoal...

BA: OK, and then some of the docents have wondered about your approach to the paper with the globe. It almost looks as if you did a rubbing technique there. Did you take… it almost looks to some people as if the globe has a texture element placed under the paper and that you rubbed the graphite onto it...

CH: No, I don't think so, it was probably me smudging it [audience laughter].

BA: Because you don't use string! [referring to Charles Benefiel's technique] [audience laughter]

CH: If you work on a picture for two and a half years, the original work starts wearing away. As you can see, some of it wears away because of my stomach. I was lying… I had a table… it's only four by four and sometimes you need to lie on the paper to reach other points. But I like that. I like the way that it plays every time, the smudges...

BA: And the way it shows your participation in making it.

CH: It's strange because it actually gradiates [sic] the color. It changes every time, not because of time, not because… it's the fact that you wear it away. Two and a half years... I quite like that. I never clean up any of my smudges. I just find them part and parcel of the picture.

BA: Thank you. Hiroyuki, how about you? Is there something that you 're working on now that is distinct from your work upstairs in the drawing show?

[HD:...]

CH: What was the question again? [audience laughter]

BA: So Chris, for your drawings that are thirty-five feet long. Do you have a sketch or kind of process that begins before you tackle the page?

CH: Well I think I treat my work more or less like a diary. I repeat images through various pictures. I don't really have a plan. Sometimes when I have an idea in my head, I just draw a little picture about this large [indicates a size around four by five inches]... might take me ten minutes, and that's the time I decide whether to do the drawing or not. If the picture is something that I don't like, then I won't even contemplate drawing it, but if it's an idea that I want to draw then, that'll be my next picture. It usually happens about three quarters the way through the previous picture. By that time, I'm like raring to finish this work and carry on with the next one. When it comes to planning it, it really doesn't matter how big it is or how small it is, it usually takes probably about fifteen or twenty minutes to plan it on paper. I put a few lines in just to know… Even with the large picture, even with the thirty-five foot picture it took me about fifteen minutes to plan and the rest of it was filling in. Certain areas, especially the large work, a lot of areas that I didn't know what to do, things just came. That's how I work and something pleases me, a design pleases me, I just carry on and on and on until I'm heartily sick of it. Nowadays, I don't draw leaves. Some people think that perhaps it's because I'm describing a wilderness wasteland. I do like dead trees; they're a part of nature as well. I'll probably get back into drawing them but at the moment, ça suffit.

BA: Thank you. Hiroyuki, are there sketches or pre-planning before you put pencil or pen to paper?

[HD:...]

BA: Thank you. Chris, of course the thirty-five foot drawing is bringing a lot of dialogue and conversations from the audience coming into the museum. In New York, there have been two recent exhibitions. PS1 show in Greater New York, where one of the artists in that exhibition had an eighty foot drawing [Hipkiss feigns piqued expression; audience laughter] snaking around the gallery. And at the Whitney a little earlier, Tim Hawkinson exhibition also had a ninety foot long drawing, but both of them post date your work, thirty-five foot drawing, by ten years. They were both done much later then your endeavor I think. When we were talking about you and your work, you expressed that when you finished the drawing after two and a half years, that you said were never going to do one again. And then you promptly started another one that's now in Raw Vision's Collection and I believe it's thirty-two feet long. Could you explain that...

CH: No, actually the one in Raw Vision was the first long picture I ever did.

BA: OK…

CH: Seventeen foot.

BA: Seventeen foot, OK...

CH: That was called... I suppose the reason why it all started… I started Doddington, which was a little village in England, that was seventeen foot, but then I decided to do London, which was twelve foot, but it was larger, higher. It was the same height actually as the Europe picture that you're showing at the moment. And then after that, I wanted to get bigger, so I decided Europe and the next one is the world but unfortunately… perhaps I need a sponsor. That's why I'm here! [audience laughter] I would really really like to...

BA: I really gave you that line, didn't I! [audience laughter]

CH: I'm not actually size-ist. I don't think bigger is better… I'm actually quite comfortable doing the medium to large pictures that I do now. They're all, I speak in centimetres, 80x140cm. That size pleases me quite well, but I must admit that I do… if I had the time, I would like to do as big as possible. Sixty foot...

BA: Our audience has been dying to know, the regular museum visitor, how you did that, what kind of space were you working in, what kind of table did you have and how much of the drawing could you see at any one time?

CH: It doesn't really matter how long it is because that actual piece was done on a roll on a table in a room about twelve meters square, which is about thirty-six foot square, on the table. It's weird because it wasn't just me on there as well. My wife, she had the computer, she was writing, so we were sort of fighting for space. We also were eating at the same table… and the cats [audience laughter]… can't forget the cats. At the time we had six cats, and five of them would actually sleep on the table [audience laughter], so a bit of a fight. That wasn't really the difficulty. The difficulty was not really seeing it, not being able to tie it in the way that I wanted to. But at the same time I knew that if I laid the picture out… I couldn't do a picture that size again… if I laid it out I probably wouldn't continue. I wouldn't even start it in fact because too much to see. Also, a piece of paper that large; it's just a chore to fill in and that's not really how I work. Although I do have an idea in my head where things go. I prefer to see part by part, piece by piece, especially on a large picture.

BA: Thank you. Charles, numbers, and your preoccupation with numbers. A lot of visitors to the museum have wondered what the numbers mean for you. Hoping you can talk about that.

[CB:...]

BA: Selig, repeat the question into the mic.

Selig: I just wanted to take up the point you make and ask all of you artists. I'm curious to ask all of you how aware you are of contemporary artists, what's being done by academically trained artists, and could you elaborate, each of you, on contemporary artists who you're aware of who have influenced your work who you particularly admire?

BA: Thank you, Selig. So the question is how are contemporary artists influencing your own work and who do you admire and do you see any contemporary artists perhaps being inspired by your own work? And I think we'll start, Selig, by asking Mr. Doi and let Charles… Mr. Doi would you address that?

[HD:...]


CH: I don't think I'm really, I'm not really, I couldn't really say that I've been inspired by anyone, to be honest, but when I was young, obviously, I used to like Hieronymus Bosch. I thought, “I could do better than that.” [audience laughter]

BA: And you have, you have! [audience laughter] Every one here thinks so!

CH: I mean I used to... Erm, Charles was talking about numbers. I wasn't very good at maths but my favorite number's three and the tryptych is what inspired me. That was always the… Francis Bacon, he did tryptychs as well... three all the time... It's not necessarily the images or the work themselves. Art doesn't really move me, not even my work actually really inspires me all the time. I know whether a picture's good or not, but I usually need my wife to tell me whether it's finished or not [audience laughter] and if she says 'yeah' then it's OK and I'll stop at there. But it's landscapes, political debate, that I put into my work that gives me inspiration rather than other artists.

BA: Thank you. So Chuck Close and...?

[CB: Oh!...]

John: I'd like to ask Chris about the role of women in his drawings [audience laughter].

BA: So the question of John's is wondering if Chris could discuss the role of women in his drawings and particularly the drawing upstairs?

CH: First of all I mean there have been quite a few people who've said that I draw women. They're androgynes that I draw. They're neither women nor men. OK, they may have a feminine form but, erm, what was the question again? [audience laughter]

BA: Why the figures? Why the androgynes? What do they mean for you?

CH: I think when you draw a landscape, sometimes you get lonely. [audience laughter] and you need people in it. What's better than androgynes! [audience laughter] No, a lot of people have… it doesn't annoy me so much but it does perplex me to a certain degree. A lot of my figures especially the past few years are based on a singer called Brian Molko of Placebo, who is sadly not here tonight, but an androgyne form… and that's about it.

BA: Thank you.

CH: I haven't answered the question. [audience laughter]

{In fact, Hipkiss felt compelled to answer the question more fully, in writing, for this page on the site, in August 2008:

"There are a couple of points that I'd like to add. For me, the characters can be seen as alter-egos and they so happen to be feminized in a way, not because I have nagging sexual-identity issues, but because I don't find I can draw masculine features or normal every day clothes. Statues by Michelangelo, for example, are beautiful, naked, male forms - but the images are far more 'feminine' than they are 'masculine'. I see those masculine statues as exuding beauty, rather than what every-day men tend to look like, i.e. hairy, rough, square. I find it odd that my figures are so routinely described as 'women'; I can't draw the archetypal woman - the hour-glass figures, etc. - any more than I can a typical man. Someone said that my figures were RuPaul-esque and that was much more accurate; if you look closer, they are far more 'transvestite', archetypally-speaking, than they are 'woman' - or 'man'.

"Not wishing to make a negative connection between that description and what I'm going to say next, they're like modern-day fairies - magical figures, larger than life. On the other hand, they're also very badly drawn and that says a lot, in that I haven't spent years honing my life-drawing skills, as I would if they were important elements of the drawings individually; they're symbols rather than personalities… and many of my drawings don't even feature them, which is another reason why I find the attention they get a bit disproportionate.

"I've also had people imagining orgy-style goings-on in my work, or referring to the figures as though they're pornographic or overtly sexual. I don't see that at all (perhaps it says more about the viewer?!). They are just a part of the work; it gives it an edge, but it's also just the way it comes out. The people are just images, like the trees and flowers - but humans are made of arms and legs and things… I don't think they're grotesque, as are many of the figures in many comic or fantasy artworks, for example; I don't want to horrify in the way that sexual explicitness can do. There's no gore either. I want my pictures to be works of beauty, whether I succeed or not, and that would go against it. I actually really don't like blatant eroticism in art - and I really, really hate to see women objectified, so that's probably why I react quite strongly to that charge. If I was a female artist drawing the figures I do, it would probably never be seen that way (I'd more likely be seen to be portraying myself in these 'objects', which is actually closer to the truth)."}

BA: A question from the back?

XX: I have two questions. One to Chris and one to Doi...

BA: How about one at a time.

XX: OK. The one for Chris is: in some of your work, you have words that seem like word fragments that seem almost random or nonsensical in that order, and I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit?

BA: So the question from the audience is: if you could talk about the word fragments and what they might mean and how they're operating in your drawing.

CH: They don't really mean much. I mean, in one way, you could say they don't mean anything, but I'm pretty sure they do. With word fragments, sometimes I would start a sentence and if the word doesn't fit by the end of the picture I'll just end it [audience laughter]. It doesn't really bother me. It's more poesie — sorry, poetry — rather than any meaning. But at the same time, over a pint down the pub, you could spend a lot of time talking about the real meaning of people's work as opposed to writing. I treat it more as a poetry, especially negative words, swear words, which I find... especially words like hate and fex and fist... I find that the negative to describe a positive frame of mind...

BA: and one more?

XX: Mr. Doi, I want to know how does cooking relate to your drawing? [audience laughter]

[HD:…]

Randall Morris: Chris, I know I swore I wouldn't ask you any questions you know, and you can actually answer this with a yes or no if you don't want to go deeper into it, but with the other two artists on the panel it's sort of more evident in a sense that do you feel there's a narrative running through your drawings, a consistent diary, of that you continually come back to, or does each drawing begin anew in a sense?

BA: So Randall started by that he swore that he wasn't going to ask a question [audience laughter] but he can't resist because of the presence of Hiroyuki and Charles [audience laughter]. Is there a narrative, Chris?

CH: Well, I'm pleased with the question because he doesn't mention 'phallus' (audience laughter). There's a diary, because each picture successfully [sic] has images present from the first, the previous one. There is a diary to it, a narrative, that narrative I suppose, but also the narrative of something that is very… I just can't describe. I really cannot describe it. It requires a lot of explanation. As to the other narratives, well, they do run through them. I mean, political narrative is always there but not very obvious, not even to me sometimes. It's very powerful. Politics to me is something that I... when I was young, I was never ever interested in at all. I was anti-politics, anti the vote, anti establishment anti… To me, I just rejected it all but now, especially living in France for four years, that's come back again. The idea of politics, the idea of society has interested me more. That is something that flows through my work, although I can really say it's very difficult to describe actually what it means or what it entails but I know that it's there. So there's that narrative, but I think the most interesting one for me is the narrative of my everyday life, landscapes that run through my work. I like the changes in landscapes as you go to different countries, especially if you do live in different countries, your world changes. If you could put all my works in a long line you'd see it very clearly. It's just so obvious you could see it; see things that fade through and then disappear and very rarely come back again. Usually if I'm bored, I'll find something to put in an empty space. I'll have an idea to bring back something, try it differently. But like I said about leaves I can't draw leaves now I don't know why I can't draw leaves. And cats, I can't draw cats (audience laughter).

BA: We can take a few more questions. Phyllis?

Phyllis Kind: I was just going to ask you before: do other people see your work the way you do and do you care?

BA: Are you addressing this to the panel?

PK: No, to Chris.

BA: OK, so what does it mean to you how other people interpret your work?

CH: I think that once you draw something and put it out to the world people can make what they want of it. Especially if you buy a work then it's yours...

PK: Do you think that they…?

CH: No, I don't think they do at all. It's up to them what they think. The idea that there is an apocalyptic, holocaust thing idea to my work... I don't see it like that at all. When I draw small barren landscapes, they're to me just what comes from my head and my imagination. Apocalyptic is just not the word. I love to draw something that is attractive, beautiful to look at. Obviously one can see apocalyptic ideas. I can guarantee that that's not something that I… My work to me is a very positive thing. It's like a reverse. To use swearwords, to use very strong language or ideas like that can be called slightly shocking. It's actually a reverse of the power that is installed in them...

BA: Chris, you're making me think of a lecture that I went to last night. Robert Storr was interviewing Laurie Sevins [name unclear], the photographer, and she was she said working in photography for thirty years. And she found herself fifteen years ago having a difficult time with the reception of her work and also a difficult time trying to talk about her work, not finding the words that were appropriate and meaningful to what she was after. And so she started journaling every day and writing in a diary every day, just about what was on her mind in regard of her work and fifteen years later she's said that it's really helped her grasp the vocabulary to discuss her work to others. I wonder if you've ever thought to try that? No?

CH: I just love the idea people think different things about my work, that once you draw something and you finish it and you send it off. At the moment in my house I have one, I think. I have one picture of my work and that's it. I don't like to keep my work. I think the only thing I like to do is take photographs of them. I have a record of them. To me, when a work is done it's usually sent off to a gallery. I don't like it in the house. I don't have any works on my walls. When it's in the house or a collection or a museum it's what they want to make of it, to me. I don't agree, I strongly disagree with certain things that are said about my work but at the end of the day it's not my decision. It's nice just for people just to really love a piece, or hate it, it doesn't bother me, but it's like they make what they want to make out of them.

BA: Thank you. XX?

XX: Charles; what role do you think your insomnia has in your work?

CB: Oh, boy...

BA: Thank you. This has been a really enjoyable evening and I can't imagine a better panel of artists and I'm very thankful that that three of you, that have never done this before, are so giving about your work and process…

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