The Multi-Dimensional Realities of Wayne E Campbell

Wayne E Campbell is an artist who has forged his own career path across five decades and two continents. He got his M.F.A. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969, and was awarded the SECA Grant from the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1971. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1972, and a CAPS Fellowship in New York in 1978. He held successful solo exhibitions in San Francisco and New York and addressed gender inequality in the art world years before anyone had heard of #MeToo. Then he decided to take time off to found and run a highly successful construction business with his husband. After retirement, Campbell returned to making art full time, and now splits his time between New York and Barcelona. The artist’s pieces range in size from 77-cm x 57-cm postcard drawings to a 4.5-meter x 7.5-meter puddle of shimmering crude oil on the floor. His body of work is profoundly experimental and encompasses numerous mediums.

“Wayne’s career trajectory was such an interesting one. I love to support people who are into their art for the creative expression, and that journey of personal discovery." —Irene Carbonari, Haimney gallerist.

On Tuesday, March 19, local art space Haimney Gallery will inaugurate Campbell’s second solo exhibition in Barcelona. The show will include works from Campbell’s paintings “The Shelter Series” (representing interiors), “The Shelf Series” (incorporating faux three-dimensional objects), and “The Postcard Series” (each piece begins with and includes a postcard). The gallery show will run from March 19 until March 31 at Haimney Gallery (Carrer Trafalgar, 70). Gallery hours are 15:00 until 21:00, open Wednesday through Saturday. The grand opening is Tuesday, March 19, from 19:00 until 22:00. Free entry includes a glass of cava and the opportunity to meet the artist.

Irene Carbonari, the gallerist at Haimney, says she fell in love with Campbell’s work immediately. “Wayne’s career trajectory was such an interesting one,” she says. “I love to support people who are into their art for the creative expression, and that journey of personal discovery. Wayne’s style of representing multi-dimensional realities shows us more than just a one-dimensional representation. Wayne is … different from what traditional artists and traditional art buyers are used to here, and this is something I think that will be growing in Barcelona.”

This writer for Metropolitan had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Wayne E Campbell in the busy days before his solo show opens.

Q: Mr. Campbell, what was the impulse behind the pieces you showed in your first exhibitions in the 1970s?

I was a student in the art department at U. of C. Berkeley in the sixties, so it was hard to not have political, social and gender issues slip into your work. Ideas had to be strong in the objects made. I have a hard time calling them sculptures, and of course “painting was dead” at that time. But, looking back, I tried to progressively take the object out of the space until I just poured five gallons of oil on the gallery floor to define a space that no one could enter.    

Q: How does the use of different mediums—from fiberglass to paint to 3-D objects like the chairs—impact your artistic process?

In the 1960s and 1970s ideas were more important for me than materials, so whatever was needed for a presentation I used. But once that choice was made, then the visual development of the piece became a bit obsessive. It had to look “right.” Don’t ask me to define that word. For me, I know it when I get to it.

Q: What is it you most enjoy about working with different mediums/formats/sizes?

These days I tend to work in one format for a few months at a time, whether it is with the postcard drawings series, small paintings or large paintings. Last summer I went all the way back in time to expand on an idea from 1970 and made two new chair sculptures based on the original gender-oriented piece. I cannot do the same thing over and over; I like mixing it up.

Q: How did taking a break affect your perspective once you returned to making art full-time?

For 27 years my husband and I had a construction company in New York City. I called myself a “Sunday painter” then. I made some art during those years, but always visited galleries and museums. More importantly, art was always on my mind. When we retired the business in 2004, we started living half the year in Barcelona. I always thought making a good painting was much more difficult than a good sculpture, so I took up painting on canvas with acrylics as a new challenge. Barcelona had something to do with it too: the light, the colors and the youthful energy. Haimney Gallery, which will host an opening for the show of some of my work on March 19, is a perfect example of the young art energy I find here.   

Q: Language that deals with defining gender, often related to being an artist, has played into your work in the 1970s, in the 80s, and again in this decade. What attracts you to this theme, and what has caused you to come back to it again and again over the years?

When I finished school in 1969 in the San Francisco Bay area, a big issue in California art schools was the low number of women artists who were teaching. That started my interest. It was the 1960s and we were trying to change the world. San Francisco had women artists that I greatly admired, like Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo. I still come back to the issue because the balance in the world is still wrong.

Q: Has the recent spread in awareness of gay rights, women’s rights, and transgender rights had any impact on either how you work or how others receive your work?

All these “rights” awareness started for me in the 1960s in San Francisco because these issues were already out in the open, they and other issues often slip into my work even now. One of the small paintings in the show is called CONFETTI AND CARDBOARD (HOMELESS AND HUNGRY PLEASE HELP). The gallery chose to include this piece and a “postcard drawing” dealing with the gender issue. Maybe we will learn from how others respond to them.

Q: Why the chairs? And what does the postcard format represent to you?

The chair sculptures started in 1969. One of the first was the EENY MEENY MINEY MO piece which also started the gender pieces. The words to the children’s counting out a rhyme (slightly altered) needed a physical structure. I made canvas slip covers with their painted words to put over the backs of folding chairs. The chair structure became the stretcher bar for the canvas.  I spent the 1970s making chair sculptures in this manner with different content.

The “postcard drawings” started in 2001 and will continue into the future. The question is: What is a postcard? To me it is a short story with an illustration. For example, a picture postcard of Niagara Falls that says on the back: “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.”  That is model for the structure of the drawings, they always start with a postcard and include a “story” stamped into the paper. My piece PULLING COLOR APART is a clear example of this format.

Q: How did winning prestigious awards at a young age affect your career?

Well, it encouraged me to keep going. The most important lesson for any young artist, no matter how your career is going at any given moment, is to go into the studio and work.   

Q: How did you choose what pieces would appear in this show?

The gallerist at Haimney, Irene Carbonari, chose the work. I think she had a vision for what the show could be or represent. For me, seeing the work outside my work studio is always an eye-opener.    

Q: What can the public expect from this show? Why is it different from other shows of your work in the past?

I hope they see interesting art, maybe. Something they have not seen before. I hope it is different from past shows because perhaps I am doing my job better, being more experienced.

Q: How has your time in Barcelona affected your work?

Besides talking earlier about the light, the colors and the youthful energy, I am affected by my studio space. It is a small storefront space without much daylight. I like working under artificial light, and something about this place it is just right. In my bigger studio in New York, I always think I should reproduce the Barcelona space in exacting detail. I guess I want to test the magic I feel there.     

Q: Anything else you’d like to add, about this show, about your work in general?

I hope people are curious and come to see the show.

More information is at www.wayneecampbell.com and www.haimney.com.