In Conversation with Nolan Meyer
Final Critique with Nolan
Introduce yourself!
Hello, my name is Nolan Meyer. I’m the first resident at the feverdream residency. I’m a traditional painter. I mostly work with little digital references. Things like video games, memes. Things you find on twitter, the internet. Things like that.
How was your experience at feverdream?
It was great. It was everything I could’ve asked for. I mean I went in with the expectation that it would be a place where I would have more room to make work. I would be able to pay my rent check and not have to worry about it and just get to work. And that’s exactly what it was. And I didn’t have any issues, I didn't have any kind of gripes with it. Just came in, worked, ate Corner 11, and left. It was awesome.
What did you learn about your artistic practice during your stay?
I learned that I still have it. That sounds kind of funny but post school it’s kind of hard to make work because [you’re] working full time, moving around, trying to solve money stuff. It was nice to get back into a very serious straightforward work environment. And to be able to put my head down and see that I can still put my head down and grind out a lot of work.
How was this opportunity a boost for yourself as an emerging artist? Did it set you ahead?
I think it definitely set me ahead. I didn’t have a ton of work postgrad, and again having that time I cranked out 6 pieces– all of which I think I will be using for grad school applications. I might try and apply for some shows. Just having that work that I know is up to scale and up to where I want to be at right now is really useful.
How did this experience lend to any experimentation in your practice? What did you experiment with?
I think it was mostly imagery I was using and also knowing that pretty much everyone here wouldn’t judge me. I think if I went to another art residency it’d be more helpful to have someone that was saying directly no to certain things. Because I think that a lot of the paintings I made I just sort of made without really worrying what somebody would think about them. Just getting to try a bunch of stuff and see what happened. You know there’s not that pressure of impressing an artist from a different state or different country, which I thought was useful.
How did you surprise yourself during your stay?
I was surprised with the quality and quantity of the work I made. Maybe it was built up that I needed to make a bunch of really good paintings because I haven't had the chance to. It felt like every week I would make a work and I would be done with it and I liked it. Usually that doesn’t happen, every once in a while there will be some misses. Pretty much everything I made for this felt like it was a hit. Except for maybe like one or two. (Laughs)
What did you think about the space you work in? Did it foster creativity?
The space up there? If you are a younger artist what you are looking for is just somewhere to work. I loved the space because it wasn’t my bedroom. (Laughs) Up there it’s a shag carpeted open air place. The office space is super friendly. They always play music. There’s usually coffee. It’s pretty much anything you’d need. Even if you were working at a larger scale I think it would still be an alright space to work. Of course there’s all the people up there. It was really nice to interact with Maxmillian obviously, another painter, Owen, a videographer, and a rotating cast of characters that would give you little feedback or maybe they’d watch all your Valorant clips with you just randomly at the start of the workday. I think the environment was great.
Did you feel like a member of the community at the studio space?
You know, for only two months, I did. It was nice. I felt like I would go in and I felt like I was working at a desk job and they were all my coworkers. Even though most of the time I had my headphones in and my head down working. It was really nice.
Final critique with Nolan
Was the neighborhood area surrounding the studio a positive? What is the best restaurant in the area?
The neighborhood was so great. I haven’t really been to Tremont a lot—I love how walkable it is. I pretty much walked to Corner 11 every day. I know my bank account will be suffering for how many times I went. (Laughs) It’s pretty awesome. The neighborhood is great. On the drive in I always had all this industrial stuff with the Steelyard down the way and it was a really cool thing to drive by because it was very Cleveland, I guess.
What was your favorite piece you made while here and why?
I think my favorite work I made while I was here was this really gross looking painting of a bunch of weird gory things from video games and with big green text it said: “Divine Light Severed.” I think that one was my favorite because it was something I've been trying to achieve for a while where it was this very maximalist, over the top, super digital thing that I’ve been trying to make for a while. I was thinking about this music genre hyperpop and how over the top and abrasive it is. But you can understand it as a piece of art but it's sort of abrasive and you have to spend time with it to enjoy it. And I think that nailed exactly what I wanted. I also really liked the ghillie suit painting. That was the final painting I did. Because that had a great reaction and it was the first time I did a straightforward scene painting that I think was really successful.
What was your biggest takeaway?
My biggest takeaway was that, it sounds kinda silly, but I realized that I am good at art but there is a lot of stuff I have to learn still, which is kinda cool. Before [in school] it was more of a negative like there was a lot I had to learn. I think now I have a little more confidence in making stuff. Like I can make work that I’m proud of which is really cool. But still even if I'm proud of it sometimes it’s still not communicating to the most amount of people that it could be, which was cool to learn.
What were you most nervous about?
To work in an office space with almost like 10 people. I was really nervous about that at first. It might’ve been the first day but everybody was just super friendly and already joking around just out of nowhere. So that was a really cool thing. Basically it was my one fear about the program was that I was gonna have awkward interactions with office workers and stuff. It’s unfamiliar territory but everyone was extremely nice. They would ask me how my day was, say good morning, make jokes. I think I mentioned earlier but watching Valorant clips with everyone in the room so that was cool. (Laughs) I think that that was another part of it that stood out to me. That everybody whether they knew it or not they were offering some really helpful advice. Even if it was just in passing. They would say something and I would reconsider something I was thinking about. At one point we were talking about architecture. Somebody was worrying about their architecture project and we were talking about how each element gets read, and that sent me down a rabbit hole of a piece I was making.
What was daily life like while you were here?
It was nice because I knew what was happening everyday and I knew what I had to do everyday. Come in, get a cup of coffee, refill the paint cup if I needed to, mix some paint and just work. It was so structured but by accident and that was really nice. I would go through these cycles of working for an hour or two really hard and then I would just grab a cup of coffee, hang out, sit down and see what I needed to work on. Maybe watch a youtube video here and there. And then come back and then get back to work. That helped me get a painting a week, basically. I liked it better than undergrad because you didn’t have to… well not that I didn’t like it better than undergrad in case any professors end up seeing that aspect. (laughs) But you know undergrad is where you learn everything and this is getting to test it out which is a cool space to be in. In undergrad I felt like it was trying to impress people, whether that be with trying to be more smart than I was [but] in this I just ran with it and did whatever because I think the environment let me do that.
What did you think of the critiques?
It was very cool to have someone like Maxmillian who is in a very similar situation that I am, where we're still trying to learn about the art world and how it works and how we want our work to be read. It was interesting to come in and be interacting with people who are really familiar with the art world but aren’t makers themselves. They would tell us what they were reading from these things. You had people that would come in that were less familiar with the art world and the semiotics and all the weird theory stuff. I think when they would come in and point something out about the work and what they were getting from it. It was really helpful to get this viewpoint you don’t get a lot where they would take it seriously and trust that you were saying something but they wouldn't also have the same language as someone that had been through that “teaching thing”. They had something else that was really valuable. You get more of an idea of how somebody who doesn't have a connection to that art world would interact with your work which is a pretty hard thing to do in art school because everyone is sort of connected and no one is necessarily an outsider.
Did you learn anything surprising during critiques?
I was surprised because it’s a very cool thing when people have different opinions than you and they give you opinions about your work and they’re not afraid to give you those opinions. That was a fear of mine. That in a critique it would just be like: you did this really well! But somebody straight up said that they didn’t understand the work which is a very useful thing to hear especially working with something I thought was very straightforward. Getting that real true feedback and criticism is really helpful and I was happy that they are doing that here.
