3.
GCML: You built the graduate fine-arts program at Otis and chaired it for twenty-six years. What did teaching do to your work - and what did it give you?
RD: I had started teaching art courses in colleges in Los Angeles just a couple of years after receiving my MFA in 1975. This is something that I had not aspired to do at all; however, a teaching job fell into my lap, and I found that I enjoyed it and that it opened up even more exploration into art, artists, and the art world. I actively pursued other teaching jobs, and after a few years of teaching at a variety of colleges - one of them the Otis College of Art and Design - the president of Otis asked me to develop a formal Graduate Fine Arts program for the college. The Graduate Fine Arts program was launched, and I chaired it for twenty-six years. With very few resources it evolved into a viable and successful program. Because it started with a very small number of students, I was able to have personal relationships with each student, and it also allowed me to continue to develop my own practice. The enrollment was capped at twenty- four students, and I was slowly able to add full- and part-time faculty, guest artists, and other speakers to the program. I organized the program so that I was able to reserve time for my practice, and although the job demanded a great deal of my attention, I was still able to make time for my own work. The need to be able to accept and discuss all nature of artistic practices was a valuable challenge, in that it broadened my knowledge and scope of understanding and my ability to guide my students in finding their voices. The curriculum was based on the best of what CalArts had offered, as well as what it didn't provide. From that experience, I made a concerted effort to hire faculty and visitors who would not only challenge our students but offer diverse viewpoints. I made it very clear to the students and the administration of the college that I was not of any value to the students if I was not an actively practicing artist as well. 

 

All of the above helped me to develop a self-confidence, self-reliance, and an openness to ideas and to negotiations. I must say that leaving academia and spending my days in my studio has been an incredible dream.

 

4-5.
GCML: You make each work as an independent entity rather than in series, and nearly all of them carry ID numbers instead of titles. Why work this way - and what are the advantages and disadvantages?
RD: Approaching each piece individually, as an individual and autonomous entity, is how I have always worked. Seriality isn't interesting to me. It is in part a product of the diverse and broad influences on my work. The disadvantage of this strategy, if that is what it is, is a lack of a signature look. The advantages are a focused singularity and complex relationships and conversation between each piece. Each piece is a discrete individual proposition. I am haunted by the idea that my exhibitions may look like a group show - although this seems to be an idea that I have manufactured, as no one else seems to think this is the case. I have learned to trust my intent as a unifying factor. I do try to keep a continuity by not switching sizes or materials too often. I am now more frequently quoting myself, revisiting ideas and themes from previous works. I have realized that ideas and motifs are not "used up" if I have only used them once, and that frequently what I see as a similarity between works is often not seen this way by others at all. I think that this approach to working has helped create a sense of generosity in my work. There is room for everything, and something for everyone, if they look hard enough. Rarely are my pieces titled. Each is given an ID number. This is not meant to be coy or mysterious, but because I do not like the titles that I come up with. They seem rather corny, and I do not want to direct the viewer. What the work is, what it is about, is left up to the viewer to determine. I do sometimes give my exhibitions titles.

 

6–7.
GCML: The language of collage — literal or painted — has been the constant of your practice: disparate times, places, surfaces, and patterns coexisting within a single field. How do you understand this language, and how does a new element find its place?
RD: The language of collage, whether literally or conceptually, has always been a part of my practice. I feel I can be the most articulate in this language; it is how I see the world and how I think. Often collage is a language and other times it is a dialect, but always I see it as an obvious reflection of the times we live in. Disparity of time, place, surface, pattern, scale, temperature, intent, convention, humor, association, and absurdity are all thrown into the mix. I am constantly adding new “words” to my visual vocabulary. Each needs to find its place in this peaceable kingdom. 

 

This is a quote from Charline von Heyl that states very articulately what I’m also trying to do in my work:
“I’m just trying to keep the paintings ahead of language, or better yet, ahead of sentences. Nothing is truly beyond language, obviously. I just want to get the viewer to move past definitions and on to something more personal and fragile, a place where thoughts and feelings meet, where looking feels like thinking.”

8.
GCML: How do you take the word “decorative”?
RD: Decoration as an end is not interesting to me. What is interesting to me is to decorate an idea to make it even more convincing — to heighten its ability to engage and seduce the viewer.