Whitewall recently took a trip downtown to visit artist Will Cotton in his studio. His paintings depict heavenly scenes women lounging on pink cotton candy clouds, delectably edible gingerbread landscapes, and playful portrait of models adorned with lollipop crowns and ribbon candy wigs. When we arrived we were greeted by the smell of black licorice. Cotton had just made some licorice macaroons, which we helped ourselves to while taking a peak around his studio. He had just returned from a brief residency in Florida and the studio was quite tidy, but several gingerbread maquette's, heart-shaped lollipop forests, and stacks of styrofoam cakes were out. If there were ever a studio of our dreams, this would be it. Here's part one of our conversation with Cotton.
WW: When did you first get the idea to work with these materials like gingerbread and candy and have it be part of a landscape rather than still life or sculptures?
WC: I came to it kind of slowly. Back in the mid ‘90s I was working on paintings of advertising icons. I was more and more interested in the ones that had to do specifically with sweets. I was more tied up with desire and I really wanted to paint about desire and pure pleasure and indulgence. The ones that had to do with sweets are really just that and nothing else. When you eat sweets, it’s really just for pleasure, no other reason. That’s when I started to think of a whole place made of sweets and that’s when I remembered this game I played as a child, Candyland. It’s a particularly American thing but it’s culturally universal here. Most people have that point of reference. I know when I show that in Europe, most people think Hansel and Gretel. And there’s this tradition of Dutch medieval poetry that talks about a place where everything made of food and sweets. So it goes way back but Candyland was my personal point of reference and in the game there are these places like the molasses swamp and peppermint forest and a gingerbread house. I used that as a jumping off point. I thought what are the other things that would be in this place that aren’t covered on the candy board? What would it really look like in Candyland?
WW: And recently you’ve touched on the darker side of Candyland.
WC: That’s true, I started doing these maybe a year, a year and a half ago.
[caption id="attachment_4114" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="The darker side of Cotton's candy land."][/caption]
WW: Was there anything that prompted that or was it more of, “I’ve already done those scenes let’s look a little bit deeper or to the rough side of Candyland?”
WC: I got into that a little bit right off the bat. I did some candy trailer homes and I did a flood but this idea of decay is something I’ve only just figured out how to do recently. Decay and fog. I’ve been keeping these around a long time almost with that in mind, thinking eventually I will paint something decaying but it has to be realistic decaying.
WW: So you wanted it to fall apart?
WC: I did. And in the end they’re so stable I had to help it along, I put it out in the rain one day then I gave it a tap with the hammer but the rain really helped. This big mess here looks truly weathered and old. This would never have happened if I hadn’t put it out in the elements for a while, on my fire escape. It seems suddenly very appropriate by the time my last show rolled around that I’m painting all this kind of empire in decline thing just while America’s having its troubles of that kind.
WW: The fog in this image, did you use a fog machine?
WC: I have a fog machine, it’s the most awesome thing.
WW: Basically you’ve managed to create my most ideal work station, complete with lots of candy and fog machines [laughter]. Do you have drawers and drawers of candy to use?
WC: Yeah I do I’ll show you some of my props. I have to periodically go through it and throw things away but a lot of it’s on these shelves, and here’s my fog machine.
[caption id="attachment_4100" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Cotton's candy supply."][/caption]
WW: For your paintings, you either work from maquettes or piece together scenes of, say, a model in a shower full of actual ice cream and photos of cotton candy. I feel like that would translate well into an installation piece. Have you done any installation work?
WC: Not much. the sculpture that I made for the Aspen show last year was the first sculpture I did at all and it made me think that if I use materials like that I really could do a whole room and that would be really fun for me. That’s one of the sculptures [pointing at a frosted cake totem of sorts] wouldn’t that be great - a whole room of that?
WW: I like the way they’ve been squished together. It’s certainly not your perfect wedding cake tier.
WC: That’s very important to me, it gets sculptural and even specifically references those iconic modernist sculptures that would stand on a pedestal in a gallery, this big lumpy thing. That’s what I’m talking about here. Just using these materials.
WW: You make a lot of the pastries and goodies that are in your paintings. How did you learn to make them - did you go to pastry school or take any classes?
WC: No I got a book, I have a few good books actually. So I look for things in them that I like and try to replicate them and that’s worked out pretty well. I love these colors lately, pale greens and pinks.
