When one considers the aesthetic practice of Cody Tumblin, they might envision an individual who is part alchemist and part cuisinier with one foot in the kitchen while the other firmly planted in the studio. In recent time, Tumblin has produced a handful of curious visual and culinary presentations that merge his youthful investigative spirit with a visual sense coming into full definition. This week the COMP Magazine visited Tumblin at his Rogers Park studio to discuss his early interest in fashion design, the role food plays in his art practice and life, his upcoming solo exhibit, Stray Light Shadow Between, to be hosted here in Chicago at Devening Projects, and how his journey is just beginning to unfold.
Cody Tumblin, studio view, Chicago, 2018, photo: Hyun Jung Jun
I see you are at a stage where you are establishing a healthy aesthetic practice. Presently, you are preparing for a solo exhibition, Stray Light Shadow Between, for Devening Projects and have already produced over a dozen solo and two-person exhibits in the past 5 years. Can we discuss what has led up to this point? For instance, you grew up in Tennessee, landed in Chicago to study fashion design at SAIC, then shifted your focus to the fine arts. Can you share with us any specific items that you see directing you to your present investigations?
Yeah, I feel like there are a lot of threads that ran through my life and led me here. Like you said, I originally went to school for fashion. Growing up, my mom always made our halloween costumes from scratch as well as other costumes for dress up –she taught me how to sew at a pretty young age, sometime before high school. So eventually I end up at SAIC for Fashion Design, where I quickly learn that the program didn’t fit me. I spent the rest of my time at school mostly convincing myself it’s ok to be an artist. I never ended up taking a painting class, but I focused on textiles, weaving, printmaking, dyeing– lots of processes. Thanks to my professors and friends, I studied hundreds of artists and various histories that slowly unraveled the magic of making for me. I also studied abroad on a long semester in London at Goldsmiths that was pretty formative because I pretty much spent all my time either in their library or in galleries and museums, soaking up as much art as possible. A few months after school ended, I was offered a solo show at a space in Denmark thanks to a collector and gallerist who liked my work. So I went out there for two weeks, saw two museum shows that changed my life and practice forever: Hilma af Klint at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and a huge Tal R show at the Aarhus Art Museum, and since then I’ve just ridden this wave. Just trying to make work that’s genuine, and stay away from tacky art world trends.
Cody Tumblin, studio view, Chicago, 2018
I’m curious about your obsession with food. I believe you are working on a community sourced cookbook? Can you offer insight into this interest? Do you see any overlap with this activity and your studio practice? Keeping to the culinary arts, can you tell us about Today’s Special that was organized and held at Mild Climate in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2017. What prompted this effort? What did you learn from this experience?
Yeah so I’m releasing my first cookbook in the very near future with a publisher in Nashville who is a friend of mine, David King of Extended Play Press. To make a long story short, both my Mom and Dad cooked a ton growing up and that probably wore off the intimidation factor most people get with cooking. I had always been able to throw a little bit of this and that together but didn’t start taking cooking more seriously until after school. I used to make these really ridiculous cooking how-to videos on Snapchat for a while as a kind of comedy bit and it slowly became something I loved and spent lots of time on.
Cody Tumblin, Today’s Special, Mild Climate, Nashville, Tennessee, 2017
So in 2017, some friends of mine who run a space in Nashville called Mild Climate invited me to have a solo show. Trump’s election had just taken place not long before and I felt really disheartened about my art practice which, at the time, felt isolated and self serving. The dark impact of the election left everyone feeling so vulnerable and hopeless and I really wanted to reshape my practice, find new ways to invite community and conversation into my work. So I decided not to hang any paintings on walls for the Mild Climate show. Instead, we had a huge community potluck on opening night called Today’s Special and over the next two months I held various food based programming. Every other week we had leftover night where I would bring my microwave to the gallery and people could bring their leftovers to heat up and share. We also had a day where everyone brought their kitchen scraps- garlic skins, carrot peels, chunks of this and that- and we made savory teas. But most importantly we held recipe swaps with good ol’ fashioned notecards and a scanner.
Cody Tumblin, Today’s Special, Mild Climate, Nashville, Tennessee, 2017
The recipes got me really excited as a collective whole and I began to ask people for them all the time when visiting with friends or meeting for a movie, whatever. On top of this ongoing accumulation, I had been making lists of artists I wanted to curate into shows when given the opportunity and instead decided to start using those lists to invite artists to submit recipes and works on paper. This is what became the Today’s Special cookbook project. It’s given me a curatorial project that allows me to work with artists I love but also include family and friends. But it’s also a platform to give back. I’ll be donating a portion of each volume to rotating charities through online sales. This first book is kind of a DIY all over the place mish mash, but as more are released I’m planning to play with the format and submission process.
Cody Tumblin, Today’s Special, Mild Climate, Nashville, Tennessee, 2017
Cooking is definitely very similar to art making in lots of ways, but ultimately it’s a sincere kind of love language that takes time to develop. More importantly, it brings people together– I mean who doesn’t love to eat? My partner also cooks a ton, so we have made it a point to cook for others, host dinner parties, invite people to cook together, make recipes, etc. Not to mention, my brother is also a pretty extraordinary cook in his adult life and we share a lot of tips and tricks with one another as well as ridiculous food haikus–some of which I’ve included in the cookbook.
Cody Tumblin, Hand, leaf and acrylic on glove, 2018
One of the items I note when looking at your work is the attention to application. Though initially, one may see a bit of haphazardness in your execution, yet upon further inspection there is calculation in the dying of the materials, placement on the canvas, and how you organize your installations. This is apparent in the 2017 exhibition, It Blooms Tomorrow, you produced for Good Enough in Atlanta, Georgia. Can you discuss the role the applied aspects play in conveying your ideas here?
I really feel that only in the last year or so I’m finally making the work I want to make. It’s hard to explain without diving into the detailed aspects of my process, but I have always intended to make work that is sincere, intimate, and direct. The initial gut-level-intuitive-type movements that establish my paintings early on leave residue– dye bleeding into a collaged form when the brush bumps into its edge, loose threads spilling out from seams as two paintings are sewn together, drawing forms in bleach and watching the color wash away. There ends up being a lot of chances for play where the materials can really sway the tide. Because of this, there are moments where I can choose to preserve or erase moments of this play occurring. Sometimes I choose to leave something out in the open and let it fuck things up as I continue to work, sometimes I hide things and tuck away secrets underneath new moves, and sometimes I cut things out completely and set them aside until they are sewn into other works down the road.
Cody Tumblin, Dreaming, mixed media on cotton, 2018
I am a pretty firm believer there shouldn’t be an end goal or “look” with making work, but a genuine discovery that unravels along the way, something that comes to its own end. Not to mention, making for me is a very emotional activity that has its own kind slow learning and retrospection–along with making your own hopes and desires manifest in the details of your work. I feel that unless I learn from making work, it is a pointless pursuit. Right now, there is a pretty insufferable saturation of work that is purely aesthetic and built one aesthetic decision after another with nothing underneath to hold it up and that upsets me. You have artists like Hilma af Klint, Joanne Greenbaum, Chris Martin and others who are really discovering something when they make work– not only painting but recording, reflecting, pursuing, and pursuing intensely–but focused intensity. I want to have a practice that feels like discovery with the agonizing anticipation of things coming to the surface or falling apart completely… it’s nice to be kept on your toes.
Cody Tumblin, Ups and downs and all over the Moon and Sky, mixed media on cotton, 2018
Are you looking at any long term ideas or projects at this point in your career? Myself, having worked for more than 30 years and recently discussed the longevity of a studio practices with a painter, Art Kleinman, who is in his 70’s, I’m interested in hearing your if this is something you consider at this stage in life? If not, what’s the process for selecting what follows the present?
Up until now, I’ve pretty much ridden a wave to this point in my career. Actually, because of sales, I just hit a pretty big milestone where I’ve been able to financially bump back down to part time at my day job and put a lot of time into thinking, making, and research. Which feels strange but empowering. Right now I’m trying to just have a more dedicated, rigorous studio practice but long term I’d like to do a lot more than just make paintings and show them. I’m trying to figure out new ways to develop a more socially minded, community based practice and how to secure funding for those kinds of things. I think my plan is something like:
1. Make lots of work (work that can garner attention)
2. Show more, establish myself more
3. Gather enough momentum to step outside of what’s expected of my work
4. Start piecing together new ways to make and communicate with others
5. Produce new work that embodies these experiences, relationships and communities more thoughtfully
6. Build on that until time ends
But it’ll take lots of work. Off the top of my head… I really look up to artists like Susan Ciancolo, Allison Knowles (makes a salad), Seitu Jones, and many many others who have this sort of social engine built into their work and coming out of their work. Right now, my work is barely anything of the sort as is, but it’s somewhere I’d like to be.
Cody Tumblin, Warm in the Veins, mixed media on cotton, 2018
What do you value most in your aesthetic practice?
Like I said before, which most people don’t know about me or my work, but I try and steer clear of a heavily aesthetic centered practice. I think of aesthetic decisions as something like the herbs sprinkled in during a recipe that bring it to life but are not necessarily the soul of the meal. I’m trying to be more of an alchemist than an artist. Putting unlike elements together, applying pressure, heat, darkness, and light, and something extraordinary bubbles to the surface. Which, right now, means lots of blending and mixing and pushing the materials a lot– layering, removing, and recycling. If you visit my studio, it’s mostly piles and boxes of dyed /painted cotton scraps, remnants. There is a lot of cross pollination between my works as they lose limbs and new ones are sewn on, or smaller works are unstretched and sewn into the heart of something larger. When giving life to something, a kind of history has to take place and this can be a slow burn.
Cody Tumblin, Standin on a Hill in the Silver Light, mixed media on cotton, 2018
In addition to preparing for the show at Devening Project, what else is in-process? Do you have any other exhibitions or projects you are currently working upon? What’s the plan for 2019?
The show at Devening Projects is definitely taking up all my time right now and Dan Devening is also a good friend who I’m always honored to work with. He’s got a pretty magical space and always wonderful shows so it’s a tall order to fill. So right now I’m trying to just keep blinders on and go at this full steam ahead. Aside from seeing the cookbook come to fruition, there’s a few other things on the horizon. 2019 will be the year I start paying off more of my student loans and look for more grants? We’ll start there.
Cody Tumblin, Parade, mixed media on cotton, 2017-2018
For additional information on the various aesthetic investigations (and cooking tips), check out the practice of Cody Tumblin at:
Cody Tumblin – http://codytumblin.com
Devening Projects – http://deveningprojects.com
Extended Play Press – http://extendedplaypress.com
Gilded Beast Blog – http://gildedbeast.tumblr.com/
LVL3 – http://lvl3official.com/artist-of-the-week-cody-tumblin/
Ithaca MOMA – http://ithacamoma.tumblr.com/post/153737622028/20-questions-for-cody-tumblin
Cody Tumblin, artist, Chicago, Illinois, 2018
Artist interview and portrait by Chester Alamo-Costello
