Rohn Koester’s new work at Urbana-Champaign’s Independent Media Center explodes with dimension and color. When we last heard from him here at Smile Politely, it was in the context of his policy and advocacy work as Facilities Manager at the Channing-Murray Foundation. He’s still heavily involved in that work but with this show, his focus is on how art explores multidimensional reality. I had a chance to chat with Koester ahead of his work on display at the IMC’s gallery.
Smile Politely: What inspired the work you’re showing at the Independent Media Center?
Rohn Koester: The art pieces included in the IMC show come out of some of my writing entitled Metaphysical Weather Report. The workflow is similar for each piece: I draft the image with ink or acrylics on paper, scan in the image and complete the piece with digital tools. For most pieces, I incorporate several layers of ink/acrylics before using the digital tools, thus building a dimension of depth in the final image. I tend to use digital tools the way I use physical collage media – organizing images around color palettes, incorporating different materials, cutting and pasting.
Inspiration for the art comes from the environment around me. For instance, the other day I created a piece about a sleepwalking dinosaur, which I think is funny as a point of contemplation. Dinosaurs probably walked in their sleep sometimes, right? This image was inspired by the oiling and resurfacing road work that’s happening in my neighborhood right now. I started out with a drawing and then began to fill out the image with two color palettes I created for it — one that aimed to be kind of funny, and the other that grounded the metaphor in something serious — the state of displaced personal volition in a world largely still running on fossil fuels.
SP: What do you want people to take away with them from this particular show?
Koester: I want the art to feel accessible in service to reflectivity — this is the sort of thing you can make if you have a pad of paper, a pen and access to some pretty simple digital tools. I’ve been working in the area of digital art since the 1980s, so I understand how complex it can all get — it’s easy to become a collector of algorithms when it comes to digital art. I have a lo-fi approach to digital tools because it keeps an artistic focus on my intentions.
Once the art has the viewer’s attention, then I want some sort of narrative conflict to appear about what feels right and wrong about the art. In Avian Ablutions, for instance, the bird’s beak is much bigger than its eye — isn’t that strange, given that the eye looks like a human eye? And then maybe you think about the human acts of speaking and consuming compared to seeing and understanding, and you start to get a sense of what an act of ablutions might mean in the context of the spirit in such a surreal state. Or maybe the lines and colors just confer a good feeling. I’m okay with that response, too.
SP: What is a typical day for you right now?
I work as the live-in caretaker for the Channing-Murray Foundation, which is an historically important peace church on the east side of UIUC. People know it mainly from the Red Herring restaurant in the basement. I moved into a loft on the east side of the building in 2013 and have been serving the organization since then. In practice, being the caretaker means I’m around to set things up, put things away, do routine cleaning and maintenance, but the real benefit is that I get to be around a lot of interesting and passionate people. I divide my time between workday routines, activism, writing and art — my art times tend to be in the morning, and my writing tends to happen in the evenings. So I’m making art while the forklifts are pulling cargo off the semitrailers at the biochemistry labs across the street, and I tend to write while folks in the chapel swing dance or perform Tai Chi or play fiddle music. Around midnight, the liquid nitrogen tanker truck shows up to pump its contents into the labs, which is an interesting backdrop for solitude and reflection. The pump makes a big loud moaning sound while it disgorges the liquid nitrogen.
SP: You’ve been an integral part of the C-U community for a long time now. What makes C-U special, to you? What do we have here that, in particular, supports artists and the arts that you think is special?
Koester: I think it’s true that Urbana-Champaign has the access of a big city but the mood of a smaller community — that’s more than just marketing copy, and it privileges all kinds of stories unique to our historical circumstance and moment, both good and bad. In general, though, if folks knew how extraordinary this part of the world is, we might be at risk of going through a period of growth at the level of an Austin or Vancouver — that’s the fear I have honestly. People will find out, and two generations later, we’re a metropolis.
I used to live in a porous slab house on the east side of Urbana — literally across the street from where the cornfields start, which was a trip because where I grew up was within eyesight of a cornfield — a ten-minute walk maybe. The sunrises in east Urbana were vast and glorious; they would fill that cruddy living room of ours with the most gorgeous light of the day, everything turning pink and orange at 5:30 in the morning.
Then one spring, little demarcation flags appeared in the ground across the street, and it became clear the property was being rezoned. I worry that this is a metaphor for human sentience in the throes of late-stage capitalism. Modernity doesn’t know what to do with us, so it’s choosing formulations of encrypted cold wars and staggering degrees of prosperity, still unequally distributed to such a degree that you have to check out from a lot of life just to enjoy the small moments, and then the joy becomes somewhat simulated. As for the arts, since moving to C-U in the 1980s, I’ve witnessed the emergence of a bunch of new venues for artists and new ways for artists to find each other. We need more. Sometimes I think we need an internet of caring in which computers transact expectations of giving and receiving. I picture the arts featuring very prominently in something like that, and everyone feels better for it.
My own version of a network of caring is the greeting card book — I’ve sent out a dozen greeting card books to friends so far, with each consisting of 32 cards that feature original text and collage that collectively form a book that’s delivered through the postal system, card by card. Takes about 4 months to send someone a full book, but the process turns the book into a more personal experience. The greeting card book is a pandemic innovation on my part.
SP: After this show at the IMC gallery, what’s coming up next for you artistically?
I’m trying to develop a relationship with the art that is a cross between Paul Laffoley’s architectonic thought-forms, Lynda Barry’s graphic novels, and Hilma af Klint’s abstract paintings. I could list a lot of artists and writers I admire – the list would be huge. I like the idea of combining art and text to create work people can have a long-term relationship with. I want more people to have access to relationships like that. When I think about trying to contribute to these intimate texts, I imagine creating guides for metaphysical wellness and treatment, on subjects like consequence paralysis, diminished personal volition and self-captivation — but like if William Blake wrote and designed them. That’s where I’m going, what I’m trying to get to.
Hyperreality and the Metaphysical Weather Report
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
June 24 to July 6
Mon – Sat 2 to 5 p.m.
Tu and Th 5 to 8 p.m.
Free (donations always welcome)
