Andy Vogt

Instagram: @andy_vogt_studio

Website: http://www.andyvogt.com

Bio: Andy Vogt began in Washington, D.C. in 1970, the son of a documentary filmmaker and an environmental policy maker. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA in 1992 with a degree in Intermedia a program focused on performance and time-based projects using video, photography and installation. After college he worked in public television as the prop master for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood a historic, long-running children’s program in the US and Canada. In the 1990’s he co-created a computer art-band called Operation Re-Information which developed its own live performance software and toured the U.S. playing computers live in clubs and in galleries. After moving to San Francisco in 2000 he worked as a prop maker, model maker and art director in television and advertising and also briefly as an architectural model maker. The combination of these work experiences and being immersed in the San Francisco art scene of the early 2000’s helped to form his mix of art making techniques and processes as well as a respect for the raw nature of materials.

Statement: My work is focused on ideas of architecture, impermanence, perception and time across a wide range of materials and methods. In much of my sculpture, I’ve used salvaged wood lath boards which I’ve been collecting from the trash since about 2003. During the demolition of walls in old buildings in the Bay Area built before 1950 (which is most of the architecture that we have here) these thin boards are tossed in dumpster to make way for fresh drywall construction. These ubiquitous strips of wood have become a kind of drawing medium for me with inherent colors and standardization of size that I use to create wall mounted assemblages. My compositions often appear three dimensional despite being flat and oftentimes and depict spaces and shapes in the midst of formation or dissolution, much like the structures from which the wood has been ripped out of. This material-based idea started around 2003 shortly after moving to San Francisco and has inspired various bodies of work since then including more traditionally defined ‘drawings’ using things like ink and pastels. The drawings included this show were made with alcohol based ink on paper using a series of custom drawing tools that were dragged over the paper surface and various protective masking techniques to control where the ink went or didn’t.