卡尔尼尔森：用冰川移动的速度创作和思考

Karl Nelson: Making Art and Thinking Life at Glacier Speed
文/度度 by waverly
认识卡尔尼尔森有七八年时间，合作过几个成功的国际版画项目，但是我们从来没见过面。自从威斯康星州立大学版画系毕业后，尼尔森就回到家乡明尼苏达州,过着平静的乡村生活，娶妻生子，做全职爸爸，在照顾孩子和家庭的点滴空闲时间里创作。他的作品多年来保持一贯的平稳，安宁，不徐不疾的风格，在这个风云变幻的世界里成为忠诚可靠的参照物。
In the seven or eight years I’ve known Karl Nelson, we’ve never met in person, even though we’ve collaborated on several interesting international printmaking projects. Since his graduation from University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nelson had returned to his home State of Minnesota, and led a peaceful country life. He got married, had two kids, and became a full-time dad. With whatever bits of time left in between taking care of his family and kids, he makes art. All these years, his work continue to flow with a steady pace, without hurry, and have become a reliable reference point in this ever-changing world.
                
                
和往常一样，我向艺术家提了几个问题。在回答问题之前，尼尔森做了郑重说明：
As always, I gave the artist four questions. Nelson made a solemn statement before answering:
Hi Waverly,
I'll do my best to answer some of these questions. I'm not successful as an artist, and I don't want to pretend that I am, so my answers may not function well as promotion. You can put whatever spin on my "career" that you think will work best.
度度，我会尽我所能回答这些问题。我不是个成功的艺术家，也不想假装。所以我的回答可能不能达到宣传的目的。你可以根据需要随便描述我的“事业”。
W: Do you have photos of you working on your prints or at the studio?
你有工作中的照片吗？
K: I have no photo of me working on my prints or in a studio.
没有。
W: Where are you from? What's your upbringing? When do you know you want to become an artist?
谈谈你的艺术道路和成长经历吧。
K: I grew up in the Midwest and went to high school in northern Maine. I started drawing in high school and wanted to study art when I went to college. At St. Olaf College, a small liberal arts school in Northfield MN, I studied studio art and philosophy, splitting my time between printmaking and Wittgenstein. I then got my MFA in graphics from UW-Madison and graduated in 2004. Since then I've lived in Minnesota and made prints at the coop/ print studio Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis. I've never attained a teaching position.
我在美国中西部长大，在（美国东北部）缅因州北部上高中并开始画画，决定要在大学里学艺术。在明尼苏达州北地城一个小小的人文学院，圣奥拉夫学院，我学习了艺术创作和哲学专业，把我的时间分别贡献给版画创作和维特根斯坦。2004年我在威斯康星州立大学麦迪逊分校版画系获得了艺术硕士学位，从此就一直住在明尼苏达州，在会员制的制高点版画中心创作版画。我从来没担任过教职。
W: How did you arrive at your current painstaking technique? What could you achieve here that could not have been done otherwise? 你是如何形成现在这种极度精细，考验耐力的创作手法的？有什么必然性吗？
K: I have done work in stone lithography, screen print, woodcut. As an over educated printmaker I've had to try just about everything. I have no affinity for photographic techniques in printmaking. For me, prints are another means of making a drawing, one that adds graphic punch and a capacity for fine detail that I can't achieve with other methods. And the ability to print multiples of my drawing feels like a gust of fresh air: each print is equally good but less elevated and precious. In the fine arts prints are a bastard medium, which affords it certain freedoms despite its demoted status.
我以前做过石版，丝网，和木版。作为一个受过学院训练的版画家，我尝试过几乎所有的版画媒介。摄影技术在版画中的运用对于我完全木有吸引力。对我来说，版画就是绘画的另一种方式，一种加入了版画的冲击力和不能用其他方式取得的繁复精密细节的能力。同时，复制作品的能力就像一缕清风：每一幅版画都同样完美，但是又没有那么高大上和珍稀。在纯艺术范畴内版画是一种杂种媒介，这赋予它在受冷落的情况下一定的自由度。
A decade ago most of my etchings were made with lines through hard ground, but I have moved slowly towards more and more stippling until I was employing only stippling to make my etchings. At first I used stippling to create detailed textures and tiny patterns, but then I started to use the stippling as a "fill" and leave the thin white space between the stippled areas to become more important. To achieve this detail I use a thin ball hard ground that I smoke instead of the thicker liquid hard ground application. To my eye, aquatint has a cold mechanical look, so I prefer the warm irregularities if a stippled grey.
十年前我大部分铜版画以线描为主，但是我慢慢向点绘转移，直到完全只用点绘。最初我用点绘编织精密的质感和细小的花纹，后来又开始用它作为“填补”功能，而点绘部分之间的空白越来越重要。为了达到这种细节效果，我（在铜版上）用蜡球熏薄薄的一层，而不是用比较厚的液体蜡底。在我的眼光里，飞尘（制作的版画）有一种冰冷的机械感，所以我更青睐点绘形成的温暖的不规则的灰度。
W: Let's talk about your subject matter：the series of clouds, or the series of household items, corners of a room，the choices of intricate patterns, etc. Let's explain a little bit about your artistic approach and what's behind the artist's mind.
                
                
谈谈你的创作题材和艺术理念吧：云系列，家庭物件系列，你选择的图案花纹等。
K: The subjects of my prints have varied, but they usually involve metaphor and contradiction. I made a series of prints of floral patterns run amok in interior spaces. I was thinking about a whole host of concepts that seemed vaguely linked: on one side the ornamental, decorative, emotional, female, domestic, messy, irrational, and on the other side of the ledger is order, form, reason, male, pristine. I saw the interior scenes with tangled flowers on the walls as dramatic representations of this aesthetic/gender/philosophical fear.
我的版画题材多变，但是都带有象征意义和矛盾性。我创作过一系列花卉图案布满室内空间。我在思考一系列有联系的概念：一方面是装饰性的，情感的，女性的，家庭的，混乱的，非理性的，另一方面是秩序，形式，理性，男性，干净整洁。我将这些墙壁上布满错综复杂的花卉的室内场景视为这种美学理念/性别/哲学恐惧的戏剧性呈现。
I tried to make the flowers pretty, but also connoting fungus and mold and insect parts——Beautiful corruption. The floral brick print was a direct response to the art of Carl Andre, an artist that I can't help but like even though he seems like an asshole. He often used bricks in his sculpture and text pieces because he thought that they held no metaphor. He thought they were just what they were, pure form, pure matter. But of course bricks are very metaphorical: working class, tough guy, no nonsense.
我尝试以美丽的方式呈现这些花卉，但是它们同时也包含霉菌、长毛、昆虫等含义——“美丽的腐败”。这幅花卉砖是对卡尔·安德尔的作品的直接回应。虽然他很可能是个混蛋，但却是一个我无法不喜爱的艺术家。他经常在雕塑和文字作品里运用砖这种元素，因为他认为它们不具有象征意义。他以为它们就是它们，纯粹是形式和物件。但是砖当然是非常具有象征意义的：蓝领、不好惹的人、严肃不苟言笑的。
In Krazy Kat a brick is a love letter from Ignatz. In May 1968 in Paris, student protested for reasons as serious as economic inequity and as trivial as co-ed dorms. They chanted“Sous les pavés, la plage!” ("Under the cobblestones, the beach.") The cobblestones were torn up by the more violent protesters and thrown at the police, who themselves reacted with violent repression. I love that the slogan captures a utopian dream that is at total odds with the action it endorses: by ripping up the streets to hurl projectiles we are actually moving towards a more perfect state of nature, the serene beach that the sand beneath the road connotes. It marries romanticism with strident leftism, which isn't far off from strident fascism. At any rate, the cobblestones, the bricks in the road, became both literal tools of violence and metaphorical symbols of liberation.
在（1913-1944年连载于美国报纸的四格漫画）《疯狂的凯特》中，伊格纳兹扔向疯狂的凯特猫的砖被误认为是爱的表达；在1968五月的巴黎，争取经济平等和男女混住宿舍等权利的学生们歌唱着“鹅卵石的下面是海滩。” 激进的抗议者把路面的鹅卵石剥下来向警方投掷。这句口号俘获了与实际行动完全相悖的乌托邦梦想：破坏城市街道，抛掷东西，实际上更接近自然的完美状态，这也是“道路下的沙滩”暗示的。这是将浪漫主义和尖锐的左倾主义，近乎法西斯主义相结合。不论如何，鹅卵石，道路上的砖成为暴力和自由解放的实际象征。
As a side note: when I was at Madison, but probably before you got there, they tore up the courtyard in front of Memorial Library where all the food carts gather. They replaced the cement with new cement that was stamped, printed really, with a faux brick pattern so that the poured concrete walkways looked like they were cobblestone. The company that did the faux brick treatment was named "I can't believe it's not brick"(Which brings to mind the margarine company "I can't believe it's not butter.")
我在麦迪逊的时候，应该是你来之前，他们把纪念图书馆前面的小广场的地面全部撬起来，新做的水泥地面印着仿砖图案，所以水泥路面看上去像石头铺的。负责铺地面的公司叫“我不信这不是砖！”（有个著名的植物黄油公司叫“我不相信这不是黄油！”）
So my print would be pure decoration plus pure form. Other prints enacted this combining of supposed opposites: immutable bricks with mutable cloud, grounded potted plant with rising cloud, hedge as a border shrub and hedge in the financial sense, to float between possibilities.
以我的版画也可以视作是纯粹的装饰和形式。很多作品组合了看似对立的概念：坚固的的砖和变幻莫测的云，地面的盆栽植物和天空里的浮云，作为花园围墙的树篱（hedge）和作为金融名词的防止金钱损失的手段（hedge fund），在可能性之间徘徊。
                
                
W: What's your day to day life like these days? 你的日常生活如何？
K: My years as a productive artist hit a hiatus in 2011， with the birth of my second child. My wife works full time as a librarian and I stay home and take care of the children. Before my children were born I worked printing t-shirts during the day and spent 5-7 hours in the evening drawing in my studio. When I was drawing 30-40 hours a week it would take me 3-4 months to complete an average print, but some took as long as 19 months. Stillness, concentration, patience, and solitude are required to work this way, and it suites me well. But with two small children my time was so full of cooking, cleaning, diapers, dishes, and errands that sleep deprivation drained me of the energy to work in the studio during my short free time. I'm slowly working my way back to being an artist again, working on a new etching that is no good, making artist books which I can complete more quickly.
我作为多产艺术家的时代在2011年第二个孩子出生时中断了。我太太是图书馆员，我在家照顾孩子们。小孩出生前我白天印T恤，晚上花5-7小时在工作室画画。当年我每周花30-40小时画画时，平均需要三四个月完成一幅版画，而有些甚至需要19个月。平静，专注，耐心和孤独是这种工作状态必须具备的，也非常适合我。但是当需要照顾两个小小孩的时候，我的时间被煮饭，清洁，尿布，盘碗，零碎差使所占据，睡眠不足令我不再有精力在短暂的空余时间内创作。我正在缓慢地重新回到艺术创作中，正在制作一件不理想的铜版画，同时也做一些可以相对迅速地完成的艺术手工书。
W: What's on the horizon for you?目前有什么创作计划？
K: I try to never envision the future, to the best of my abilities. My work changes at a glacial pace, but it does seem to slowly change. So long as I'm interested in completing my next print, then that is far enough to project into the future for me.
我尽我所能从不考虑未来。我的作品以冰川移动的速度变化，但是它似乎确确实实是在缓慢地变化着的。只要我专注于完成下一件作品，这个目标对我来说已经足够长远。
I've been married for 13 years, have a daughter and a son, love to read good novels and The New York Review of Books and the New York Times, drink coffee and whiskey, write letters and postcards to friends, walk in the woods. What else is there? If a hobby is something that somebody does for non-economic reasons, then almost everything I've ever done in my life has been a hobby of sort.
我已经结婚13年，有一双儿女。我喜欢看好小说，《纽约时报》和《纽约书评》，喝咖啡和威士忌，给朋友写信和明信片，在森林里散步。还有什么？如果业余爱好的定义是不从经济目的出发的事情，那么我做的几乎每件事都是某种兴趣爱好。