Kjellgren Alkire @ eye lounge.

Dumplings, apples and gangster-ism.

I woke up the other day from a fantastic dream! I was walking into this massive 16th century cathedral that was dark and damp. Not a single color in sight. Not even in the stained glass. Just dismal shades of grey and dusty light beams. The organ pipes and pews were covered in sheets. Like someone intently left it for an unforeseeable amount of time in hopes to be back from whatever it is "they" were doing. I could barely see Kjellgren Alkire standing at the very back of the church. He was in front of a hallway leading to some church administrative offices. At least that's what I think they could be. In the echoed darkness his spurs twinkled like Christmas ornaments. I could see he was wearing a tiny red pleather cowboy hat with a white sheriffs star knitted on the front. The string from the hat was tightly fastened around his full chin. He looked sweaty in his red and white plaid shirt and suede leather vest. Simple wrangler blue jeans with a plastic six shooter and worn out cowboy boots as well. He was holding some janitor supplies. In drops the first and only dialogue between the two of us. He said, "Let me show you something Chris." I replied sarcastically, "Oh yea?" ...and we walked together through the dark hallway.

In heaven, everything is fine.

I thought about it some more and decided I wanted to ask Kjel some questions. Not about the dream but about his work. The first time I saw him performing was at the opening for the New American City show at ASU's Art Museum. He was shouting some song about the Lord and pushing pink pieces of paper around with a big broom. The pieces of paper were folded to look like houses. He was dressed up like a rodeo retail employee. There were a lot of people gawking at him with that look that reads something like, '...artists sure are strange." I didn't pay much attention to the entirety of the performance. The thing is, I really didn't know much about his work before his solo show at eye lounge this month. During my under-grad work at ASU, we were classmates in a fantastic course led by the illustrious Claudia Mesch. It was rooted in the format of a lecture but stemmed out of peer dialogue regarding the last ten years in contemporary aesthetics. We even took a field trip out to L.A. to view the Thing exhibition at UCLA's Hammer Museum, as well as the Broad Foundation for some massive galleries devoted solely to artists like Cindy Sherman, Tony Oursler, Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leon Golub and Tom Otternness. I remember Kjel being one of the few individuals to have some interesting things to say during discussions. He could spearhead conversations and this is part of the reason I chose to sit down with him. In hopes to get to the bottom of his work in a more articulate and personal manner.

Transcript.

Chris Santa Maria: I wanna start off with your decision to go to grad school over divinity practice. Where is this rooted?

Kjellgren Alkire: I was already doing church as a professional and I was making work, showing work and I was involved pretty much full time at a church and part time at a print shop teaching printmaking. I knew that I could always do more church school. They're happy to have you at anytime. But I thought, if I'm gonna do art on a more sophisticated level, it needs to be an MFA and it needs to be now...or soon. So, I moved in that direction knowing full well that the work wasn't gonna get any less churchier. It was gonna change but it wasn’t gonna get any less churchier and I just thought, well, on a practical academic level, any graduate degree is gonna be fine. It doesn't need to be divinity school or an MFA. Either one of them I can move in a direction but the MFA is more flexible.

CSM: I'm thinking of my personal memory of going to a Lutheran church as a child on Sundays and how it was interesting that my pastor both succeeded in convincing and not convincing me about certain ideas or histories. So, I'm interested in the idea of the sermon and how can be rooted in theatrics. Do the similarities between the sensationalism of religious iconography and the high-art world interest you?

KA: Yes.

CSM: But when you're at church and you're listening to a sermon, are you picking up on some of these tangents that apply to your performance.

KA: Yeah, I listen to sermons critically. When it comes to the art market, high art, low art, put it in a pot, boil it, simmer for two hours…

CSM: …digest…

KA: …yeah, make high art go away.

CSM: That's another thing. You seem to have some animosity towards that.

KA: I don't know if animosity is the right word, but I'm a printmaker. I do that because it's a democratic multiple, not because it's an elitist multiple or singular object made as a commodity.

CSM: But performance can be more democratic than printmaking.

KA: Yeah, and that's why I moved towards preaching as performance. Christianity has its own traditions of democratic inclusion. Sermons are another way to make an ephemeral broadside for anybody who shows up. How am I gonna get paid for performance? I don't know. Do I need to? I don't know.

CSM: Well, let's talk about your pricing. It's interesting that you're combining a common, before tax retail price like $17.95 to your objects. This touches on an individual’s ability to make daily acquisitions inside a predominately capitalist free market system. So, how does contemporary American consumerism squeeze into your work?

KA: Well I think that contemporary American Protestants are really adept to commodifying religion. And I'm interested in how that happens and how the commodification of religious objects, that little subculture, is branded through all kinds of advertisements, good bad or ugly. And so I'm sort of referencing that or stealing it or mocking it or mirroring it by pricing things at $17.95.

CSM: Do you see this pricing partly as some sort of purification in your process?

KA: Umm, no. I would like it pure. But I don't think I can make it pure. I can show it for what it is. Or, I can show it for what I think it is.

CSM: So you're more interested in the observation of some of these issues…

KA: …in parody a little bit. Yea. But not parody in a cruel ironic way but more like parody that elicits thinking.

CSM: In the project room you had a piece…

KA: …The Original Fine Art Jesus Voodoo Doll Carnival Game.

CSM: Yes. You're sort of tipping your hat to a more generalized audience with the juxtaposition of mainstream religious iconography and old western aesthetics. Your combining the assumption about Jesus being a carpenter with an old western typeset in the way the card is laid out. Then you have the viewer’s choice to take the card, choose a sin and hammer through the card by literally crucifying the Jesus Voodoo Doll. Are you looking to change people?

KA: Yeah. I don't make art to not change the world. If you wanna change the world you change the people. That piece is about atonement and substitution and representation and it's funny.

CSM: It's fun but I think…

KA: A lot of people take it as shock value but I can't make a thing and…you can only please some of the people some of the time.

CSM: Right.

KA: And so here's this thing that asks some fairly sophisticated religious theological questions from a fairly educated point of view, theologically informed point of view, and then asks those questions in a fairly accessible way. Accessible physically because the space is soft, people wanna cuddle with the dolls, people can actually touch this art, people can not only touch this art but they can maim the art. Which, you know, I think our culture is in fact full of iconoclasts that really want to hurt the art and full of those who want to hurt the Jesus. So maybe I am pandering a little bit to those desires in that respect. But, I’m also asking them, what do you think of sin? And what do you think about the idea of Jesus being nailed up and dying, like, in your presence as a voodoo doll is pierced in order to, you know, it’s not the same but, and I know it’s not the same. I think I’m being fairly clear with the fact that I know that voodoo and Jesus are not the same, same, same. They do not equate.

The Original Fine Art Jesus Voodoo Doll Carnival Game.
eye lounge, August 2007

But at the same time I think people, some folks are getting the joke. I’ve gotten more mileage out of that piece than anything else I’ve ever done. Anything. Anything. That piece has been in like, six states in a year or a year and a half. But it’s definitely a piece that I…I’ve ridden. In fact I thought about not putting it up because I thought that I’ve over-shown it. But then I was like, the First Friday crowd has not seen that piece, and it might go over well.

CSM: Right.

KA: And it fits beautifully in that space and I’m very very very happy with the installation.

CSM: I’m really interested in the fact that you’re meshing all of these things. A sort of country, rustic, religious, art thingness. It’s a nice mirror on how many different sects and spin-offs of religions there are.

KA: Certain cultures. They splinter.

CSM: What about your show card? It’s really interesting. It reminded me of the Trinity. Especially with the angles of your gaze. Your looking up over here, straight through me right there and down over here. Am I running off on that?

Pulpit: Three Pulpitalities
stills from video

36" x 18"
2007

KA: No, I think that’s there and numerology is certainly important. Three’s and Sevens are high biblical numbers. And I certainly am well aware of that and I use those numbers a lot and I’m interested in those numbers but I was thinking more specifically with those three as up, straight and down. Past, present, future. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Those are phrases that are in the sermons for this month and I’m thinking about those three as a way to articulate time or a linear structure like time. Maybe Trinitarian structure is also similar in that respect because in the narrative we’re introduced a father, then son and then spirit. They’re ordered in that way. But I was not specifically thinking about that or trying to embody that. But, yea sure, whatever. Feel free. As a good Lutheran, I am pro-Trinitarian theology.

CSM: Of course. But don't think you're pandering too much to the masses with that?

KA: No, I think I’m challenging the high-brow elitists who think they’ve got it all fucking figured out.

(collective laughs)

KA: The reality is that art and religion are both full of sophisticated, educated academic types in the upper crust and I can’t as somebody who’s about to get an MFA say that I’m somehow free of that. I’m part of that culture now. I was part of that culture before I started this degree. This is the real confirmation of it right?

CSM: Right.

KA: I could certainly be an MFA and make posters for rock shows for the rest of my life and probably be pretty happy. Maybe not rock. Maybe a little more alt country. Richard Buckner, call me. But, you know, I’m not trying to pander to low-brow culture, I think that’s, uh…

CSM: Demeaning?

KA: To both the culture and to me. I don’t really think in those terms. I’m aware of those dichotomies but I don’t think in those terms.

CSM: But you must be thinking about the accessibility of what your doing.

KA: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, the museum’s not always accessible.

CSM: But it tries to be accessible in it’s own strange way.

KA: Oh yea it tries. God bless em’ they’re tryin’. Thank you John, Cassandra, Marilu. Call me.

CSM: So you’re running into something when you don’t want to take the art into this high elitist market thing and with the religion, staying away from the formal up-tightness.

KA: And I really think that cowboy church is just hilarious.

CSM: Wait. This a common thing?

KA: This is a real thing that I thought was an interesting pair. I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve seen this before. This exists. There are cowboy churches with rodeo revivalist ministers.

CSM: That’s amazing.

KA: So, I mean, part of what I was trying to do was pair religion with a sub-culture that I’m more familiar with. It’s an interesting pair. And then I realized, oh, this is already paired in real life. Much more than I thought it was, having done the research. So go with it. It’s still an interesting pair and it’s more interesting that exists on so many different levels.

CSM: So how are you putting your thumb print on this presentation?

KA: Well, for starters, I don’t ride bulls for a living.

CSM: You don’t think that could be a part of it?

KA: Oh yea, I think a bull, at least a mechanical bull at some point.

CSM: Like a Jesus bull?

KA: Bull riding for Jesus. Jesus is the bull, not the bullshit.

CSM: Nice. What about your piece on the east wall? 365 Days of Bread. You seem to be cheeking your tongue with the presentation of formal objects. What sort of big ideas are behind that?

KA: I’ve got all kinds of big ideas Chris.

CSM: I know but your just putting pieces of bread up on the wall. 365 slices I’m assuming.

KA: Right. It’s a literal representation of that metaphor and it alludes to print and repetition and multiple. Albeit those things are formal, it also asks a question about, like, what do you do everyday? You know, same shirt, different day. I think that the sacred is in the mundane and those kinds of ideas are embedded in that in a very straight forward, accessible, in some respects, way. And I think that’s beautiful and I think the pieces are inherently beautiful. It’s the materiality of it.

CSM: Something minimal. Something refined.

KA: Yeah. Yeah. Fuck Donald Judd.

CSM: (Breaks through Marfa saloon swinging doors. Whiskey breath and Tumble weeds.)

KA: (Pulls out six shooter and…)

CSM: I like Donald Judd. He’s all about power and control.

KA: I don’t like that minimalism. I get it but I think it’s the ultimate example of an idea that’s been played to death. It’s intentionally already dead, played to its other death.

CSM: Your uses of terminology and rhetoric are important in your work. You seem to be building systems of meaning between systems of meaning. Homiletics, hermeneutics, voodoo, rodeo, atonement, and benediction to name a few. You’re overlapping things. Are you saying that there's little difference between faith, ritual, history, genealogy and fables? Is this meshing, or, hybridization a comment on basic fundamentals of humanity? That there’s little difference between them all.

KA: There are differences that are subtle and those differences are important. There are similarities and those can be really obvious and those are important. There are other similarities that are not as obvious and those are more important. I think that generalizing similarities, which I am fairly accused of doing, there’s something that makes me, I hope in that generalization, people are able to discern the differences. And I think that that’s a really interesting way to go about things. I say that it’s all the same and everyone says no, no it’s not. That sort of provocateur-ing helps further the dialogue and I’m maybe manipulating. But who cares, right?

CSM: I don’t know if you’re manipulating but you’re under the radar and slipping it all through some sort of back door.

KA: Okay fine. Slipping in the back door but it’s still getting the conversation further. I started this to make that conversation richer. Hey, this is really interesting stuff, look over here. Well, how do I get people to look over here? Well, I know, let’s make a rodeo carnival.

CSM: Do you think you’ve changed anyone? Within art or religion. Maybe bridging the two so people can find more of these in their personal lives?

KA: It can be both. It can be church and artifice. Church is artifice. It can be object and devotion. I don’t know how that’s different from minimalist work or older religious work from decades or centuries past. These things were for sale. They were commerce. They were also culture. They were also personal religious practice as well as corporate religious practice.

CSM: What have you been thinking about with your performances at eye lounge this month? Are you breaking away from the type of thing you were doing for the New American City show?

KA: I was reading away from that this spring and summer and reading more broadly about North American protestant preaching traditions. Catholic and Jewish traditions too. I’ve been thinking about the way that oration or rhetoric happens within more progressive or liberal communities. Since I had already engaged this stereotype of the conservative, sweaty, rodeo guy, I thought, well maybe I shouldn’t be so stereotypical. Maybe I should branch out so I was trying some of these other more progressive, more academic traditions. I sort of feel like I’ve mislead the audience by presenting images on the show card of one character and sermons in another set of characters. So, I guess this month has led me back, this final semester at ASU, to complete the project at ASU for the MFA within an older framework. To continue to stew and brew on that.

CSM: I don’t think you should be worried about that shift. It’s nice to see one thing here and have another thing there.

KA: It’s a little bit of a switch in bait and I need to be better prepared to handle the complexity of all the performances. Frankly, I’m tired. That’s one of the things I was trying to test in this show. Can I do this much performance with this much installation with this much object?

CSM: That’s one of the best things about it. Your fatigue. The beads of sweat on your forehead. Those are interesting things visually. It looks like you’re working and thinking and mulling through things. It’s not something empty or trivial that’s going on.

KA: Beads of sweat. Okay.

CSM: Let’s talk about influences. Ed Ruscha. His paintings and ideas are either A) Ultra-brave, or B) Alazae! What say you Mr. Alkire?

KA: E, all of the above.

CSM: Please completely fill in your dots. But seriously, your interested in his ideas of western culture. The sprawl of a city, particularly L.A. but it can also translate easily to Phoenix. Things like massive growth and insipid gentrification. Why are you interested in his paintings?

KA: He’s a good example of the New American Shitty.

CSM: But it’s not all shitty.

KA: Oh, it’s new and American and amazing and shitty! No, I mean, when I graduated from High School in ’94, Power road was the edge of town on the east side. The kids that I went to high school with, 10 years later had all moved to Gilbert, Queen Creek and freaking Casa Grande. They paved half way to New Mexico
and it’s car culture. I think that Ruscha has made his career, at least his early career, asking questions about that kind of culture. So, is Ruscha a huge influence? No. Am I interested in him? Yes. Are there some general similarities? Yea, of course. Other people are far more important to me than Ruscha is.

CSM: Like who?

KA: The Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping is really fascinating. The Reverend Ethan Acres, who really blazed a trail for those of us in the performative pastoral careers. Where are you Ethan? Call me. He’s actually in Alabama refurbishing a church.

CSM: So there’s an interest in consumerism but why do you think that it’s bad?

KA: Consumerism? Uh, do you feel your soul rotting cause I can smell it over here.

CSM: I’m not rotting.

KA: No. Just your soul is. No, I’m not saying that it’s exclusively bad unto itself. But I think that being more engaged in our paychecks and less engaged in our neighbors is inherently limited. It’s limited in a way that isn’t good for people and children and other living things. It drives the obvious military industrial complex. It drives bad corporate practice. There’s no profit in cleaning rivers and having mercy. So, I’ve started a weird little ministry where there’s really no profits except for those of the old testament variety. Hopefully by making these obscure connections, or, odd connections, there’s attention raised in areas that matter differently.

CSM: What about Hermann Nitsch and some of his early Viennese Aktionism? I don’t wanna talk about his new marketable splash paintings in different colors. The older ritualistic performances where he’s crucifying a lamb and involving a lot of individuals in the process are really fantastic. His use of tools to lock himself in a basement and methodically cut into something. You have objects on stage like the toy horse and a broom. This was about there being two God’s in the Bible?

KA: Yes, The Rocking Horse and The Rodeo. The two competing Janus heads. The deity. There are props right now but some of the props are more activated through audience interaction and some of them are pretty static. I don’t like the static as much as I like the involved. I don’t know if I have that much to say about Nitsch. Yes, he’s a damn profit.

CSM: But there’s something scary about him.

KA: Well that’s the nature of prophetics. It’s scary.

CSM: But you’re not scary. You're sort of the Toys R’ Us version.

KA: Oh, I’m the soft, Fred Rogers, friendly neighborhood rodeo preacher who gives children nails and hammers and asks them to find their doll and nail em’ up on the wall. I don’t know that it’s not scary, maybe it’s not scary in the same way, maybe I just haven’t let the furry loose totally.

CSM: I’m saying you have approachability under your thumb.

KA: Approachable. Hmmm. Arizona Commission on the Arts will you sponsor The Jesus Rodeo vacation Bible school in four years? If I’m still here?

CSM: I think they will.

KA: The state doesn’t like to fund religion.