TULLMAN COLLECTION ARTIST PEREGRINE HONIG INTERVIEWED BY JEFFREY WEINER FOR THE GREAT NUDE TV

             Interview with Peregrine Honig

by Jeffrey Wiener

March, 2011


Artist Website:
http://www.peregrinehonig.com/


Jeffrey Wiener: It was quite fun watching the BRAVO series "Work of Art/The Next Great Artist" and seeing you make it so far in the show. While I had to let go of my art-world cynicism in order to enjoy the series, I thought it was a great experiment. Many people who are not necessarily art-lovers became acquainted with you, and the other artists, through this show. But I was very happy to see you speaking plainly about the artistic process to the audience, and I particularly enjoyed your commentary in the cut-aways. I can see that astute clarity about our pop-culture in your work.

Que Bella Cabela

watercolor/human hair/ink

Peregrine Honig: Part of my studio practice involves allowing myself to be documented. My work is about exposure and vulnerability. Auditioning for a reality television show made sense. I gave myself to Bravo knowing the return would be abstracted. The experience was much better and worse than I could have imagined. I regret doing it and I would do it again.

Indian Spring



Watercolor


30" x 22"


 JW: You already were a "great" artist before this show, in the respect that you have been quite successful with your career as an artist, and your works are in some very impressive collections. Has the "culture of celebrity" after BRAVO had any affect on the kind of work that you do now or plan to do in the future?

PH: Thank you. I have been lucky to be noticed and discussed in academic fields. There is no pyramid to culture and I am interested in what starts a trend and how people become celebrities. The show has affected my ability to see my process. I can step back faster. I was in the living rooms and dive bars of two million people. People recognize me everywhere I go as someone they are familiar with. More doors have opened, but my interest ratio to the rooms has not changed.

Doily



Watercolor


48" x 34


JW: You've been using the nude, or nakedness, in many of your bodies of artworks. Some of this to quite a pointed and humorous affect. How does the nude factor into the overall message of your works?


PH: The body exposed is timeless and less encumbered. My people are self-reflective and I watch them transition through my work. Awkwardness is hilarious and upsetting because we recognize ourselves when we experience a public mistake. My smaller work often ends up in the guest bathrooms of my private collectors. I love how my work feels in an intimate space.

Curved Screamer



watercolor


30" x 22"

JW: Do you think the nude still holds the power to shock, or has it become a functional image for an artist. Do you feel there are any taboos or social mores left for artists to explore?

PH: The body is a catapult for me. There are always new rules and new rules are interesting. I am curious about the grey areas in etiquette- where one social norm becomes antiquated and is replaced by something stranger.

Distant Terror



watercolor


30" x 22"



JW: Your work makes me think of Egon Schiele's small erotic drawings, capturing a moment of time in his culture with these very open, naked characters. Who were the artists that had an influence on your work?

PH: Egon Schiele, Sally Mann, Hans Belmer and instructional drawings caught my hand early on. I saw a retrospective of Schiele's drawings – 8x10s on yellowing paper. His line alone is epic.


JW: Has Life Drawing been part of your artistic development and education, either formally or informally?

PH: Yes. I went to a public art high school in San Francisco that had figure models and this was wonderful. I work to draw a balance between what I see and what I know. I attend Dr. Sketchy's and hire models. I don't drag the camera into these scenarios.

Apple Olson



Mixed media, watercolor



JW: Are models ever part of your artistic process?


PH: I focus on specific bodies for different bodies of work. I am a serious watcher. I try and remain sensitive to what I haven't noticed.


JW: What's on the horizon for you next as an artist?


PH: Getting off my computer and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee in my studio. :-)





REALITY TV STAR & ARTIST PEREGRINE HONIG TO SPEAK AT ARTEXPO NEW YORK

February 1, 2011 - Christine Schrum - File under Artists, Education, Events, News



Peregrine Honig, Reality TV star from Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist"

I’m delighted to announce that socio-political artist and reality TV star Peregrine Honig will be a featured guest during the 2011 Artexpo New York Education Series! On Saturday, March 26, at 4 p.m., Peregrine will give a talk entitled: “Unlimited Edition: Publishing New Media” in Artexpo’s Education Pavilion.



In addition to her talk, Honig will join Artexpo CEO Eric Smith and Linda Jones Enterprises CEO Craig Kausen on Friday, March 25 at 5 p.m. for a panel discussion on “Marketing 101: What They Didn’t Teach You in Art School.”



Honig’s second-place win on Bravo’s first season of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” televised her ideas and work into the national pop culture spotlight. Over a decade ago, she made a name for herself when a set of her prints were purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art, establishing Peregrine as the youngest living artist to be included in the permanent collection. Her public projects, sculptures, imagery, and texts explore themes of cultural vulnerability, trends in sexuality, disease, and social hierarchies. Says the artist about her work:



“I’m interested in the relationship between popular culture, sexual vulnerability, social anxieties, and the ethics of luxury and trends in consumerism. My work asks important questions about who we are and the flexibility of what is acceptable through media, medicine, class, and contemporary court cases. I enjoy re-contextualizing familiar images and objects, using whimsy and surprise to define the grey areas in conflict.”

"Anthophobia Fear of Roses (watercolor w/vintage transfers, 37" x 35")

Peregrine has curated internationally reviewed shows and annual events under the umbrella “Fahrenheit” for fourteen years and owns an eight-year-old lingerie boutique called “Birdies.”
To date, her work is part of the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and The Chicago Art Institute among others. She has had solo exhibits in Santa Fe, Kansas City, and Chicago, and has shown in group exhibitions in New York and across the globe. Peregrine is also a recipient of the Art Omi International Artists’ Residency and the Charlotte Street Fund. She recently released Widow, a one-time limited edition faux fashion magazine in collaboration with Landfall Press, which explores the relationship between fashion and art.

To learn more about Peregrine, visit her website at http://www.peregrinehonig.com/

Welcome aboard, Peregrine! Can’t wait to catch your lecture on March 25.



NO PEREGRINATIONS FOR THIS KC ARTIST

NO PEREGRINATIONS FOR THIS KC ARTIST

By Joe Miller August 13, 2010
An interview with Peregrine Honig after her experience with reality TV




Peregrine Honig (arm in air) cheers during the screening of the finale episode of "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" at the Brooklyn Museum on August 11. Pictured with her are one of the judges, China Chow (at left), and, to Honig's left, fellow contestants Abdi Farah (winner of the show) and Miles Mendenhall, judge Bill Powers, and fellow contestants Cynthia Rowley and Nao Bustamante. Photo: Barbara Nitke, courtesy of Bravo television network

On the morning after the grand finale of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, Kansas City artist Peregrine Honig took a few minutes to talk with Review about her experience on the reality television show.

JM: What are some of the ways you grew as an artist through the process of being on this show?

PH: My work is about social structures and pop culture, and I wanted to learn about the other side of pop culture. So it’s kind of like learning a language. I thought it would be smart to ensconce myself in the country of pop culture. And so I did it. And I came in second, which is incredible, and I made work under these really postmodern conditions, and I made some incredible friends.

And I completely gave myself to Bravo — my time, my mind, my art, my identity — for this project. And Bravo provided back to me their version of it.

I think they did a really good job. I was really happy to have millions of people considering my work and ideas, it was very worth it for me.

It was really great last night, too — you know, to be sitting next to (the show’s executive producer) Sarah Jessica Parker and these new fast friends that I made through this abstract experience, watching my show that’s been in bars, in living rooms, in different parts of America. The small box is powerful.

JM: Do you feel you used television media as a medium within the work you did for this show?

PH: Yes. It’s one thing if you’re making artwork about popular culture from the standpoint of where you’re looking at popular culture. It’s another thing to make work through the other side of the mirror. It’s like understanding how it happened. It’s like understanding how to market an idea or a story to millions of people through this very specific medium with cameras and lighting and timing and archetypes.

And so to put myself in that place and have that language and that knowledge, it’s like being on the other side of the water. I know why my work is dealing with these different issues differently because I’ve actually experienced it.

JM: How were the critiques given by the show’s panel of judges?

PH: I really respect Jerry Saltz. I think he’s an amazing writer, an amazing speaker. I’ve been reading him like Dear Abby since I was in college. One of the reasons I went on the show is because of him. Anything that he was going to be involved in probably was going to be of high quality.

Bill Powers is really bright, really funny. And Jeanne Greenburg and China Chow, they had more to lose than I did, having a higher-brow perception of their cultural capital.

JM: Do you have that level of critical input here in Kansas City?

PH: Yes. I’m surrounded by amazing, bright, and incredible artists who give me critical feedback whenever I do or do not want it. We have great writers in Kansas City. We have really intelligent doers and makers of things. The Dolphin is a great gallery. In showing with them, John O’Brien has always been sincere and honest with me.

JM: Will you be showing your final project from Work of Art here in Kansas City?

PH: No, Bravo owns all the work. And I already showed that show, so I wouldn’t do that again.

JM: Did you watch the whole show?

PH: Oh, sure.

JM: Did you like it?

PH: I loved it. Wasn’t it amazing? It was so much better than I thought it was going to be. So much better. So much more interesting. It was much higher drama behind the cameras, I’ll tell you that. They definitely edited it down to a more poetic and interesting narrative because we were all sort-of off the deep end, for sure.

Richard Prince wrote a really good article about the show that said, "Here’s the art world. All of the things that are bad and good about the show are true of the art world. The way that some of it’s bullshit, some of it’s high drama and some of it’s super bright and incredible. It’s the full gamut." So if there’s somebody out there that even gets just a little bit more of a taste of it, or just a little bit more confidence in terms of looking at art or buying art, we win.

JM: Did you get a sense of different levels of reality while you were on the show?

PH: You mean because I was like hallucinating from lack of sleep?

JM: Maybe. But more along the lines of what you were saying, how the show could have gone in a different direction, to where it was more dramatic —

PH: It was very close to the storyline. What I watched is what I came close to experiencing. Little things were edited out, big things were edited out, just to make it cohesive. But what I saw was what I went through when I was on it.

JM: One reason I ask that question, I read fellow contestant Jaclyn Santos’s blog, and she wrote about the show in which Erik Johnson was eliminated and talked about how your team felt as though you were being pulled into a certain story. Did you feel you were being pulled into other stories or versions or interpretations of reality?

PH: I do. When we were pulled for interviews and we were put in really high stress situations. It makes for good entertainment. I do think that Erik kind of got the raw end of the stick in terms of just becoming afraid after an interview, and when he came back to us he was turned off.

But the truth of it is, nobody kicked anybody else off. Everybody who left mostly did it to themselves. We all have a tipping point, and it’s definitely not a matter of somebody’s quality of art or how talented they are. It’s the mechanics of how they’re driven. So people who were super-talented sometimes went home early. Because they just couldn’t stomach it. It’s a hard thing to stomach. Everything is taken away from you. There’s no music, there’s no outside material. So you are really pulling from inside yourself.That’s very stressful.

JM: My one criticism of the show is that it latched onto this myth that artists can just snap their fingers and brilliance comes out.

PH: You can, though. And that’s great.

And yeah, it takes time to make art, but it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time to fabricate it. Everybody there had made things over long periods of time, had done things that had taken long periods of time. But the challenge was to pull from those moments, those epiphanies, and make some out of what was in front of you


Picasso’s line drawings, maybe they took him three or four minutes. Pen to paper. You know, it took his whole lifetime to make that simple line.

JM: What’s next?

PH: I'm in a show up at Dolphin through September 4 and in a show with Dwight Hackett Projects in Santa Fe in October. I have such a great relationship with Dolphin. One of my sketchbooks is sort of pinned to their wall. It’s nice to offer smaller pieces of my work to my community.

And I’m making art about souvenirs and classism and why certain souvenirs are for one’s class. Like, you go to Mexico, and you get a shot glass and sombrero that’s made in China — international souvenirs and the aesthetic of that.

JM: Thank you and congratulations.

PH: Hey, silver ain’t bad.

JM: I have to admit, I was fuming afterward.

PH: Me too, in a way. (Laughs)

JM: But the more I thought through it, the more I felt that both your show and winner Abdi Farah’s were very powerful. They just told different stories

PH: And he had the hero’s journey.

The Next Great Artist - Exclusive Interview with Peregrine Honig

Work of Art: The Next Great Artist - Exclusive Interview with Peregrine Honig
Posted on 08/12/2010 by Gina in Work Of Art and Cast Interviews

by Gina Scarpa and Mike Bandy


On last night's season finale of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the three artists remaining in the competition, Peregrine, Abdi, and Miles, presented their final art shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The judges admired the work that Peregrine put into her exhibit, "Fair Game", but felt it was cluttered. She took second place, while Abdi took the win. Today, we caught up with Peregrine in an exclusive interview about her journey on Work of Art, the friends she made, and her upcoming art show.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What made you want to try out for Work of Art?

A. Peregrine: I had just finished a book called "Widow" and I really didn't have the funds to market it. I thought, "Hey, I'll just do this and it'll be a way for people to get to know me."



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: I know it's very difficult to judge art. Was that a concern of yours, going into the show?

A. Peregrine: Art is subjective but I know that I walk into a room, and even in my own work, there's a winning piece. I've curated a lot and for me, I do choose what I consider to be the best and what I consider to be the most beautiful.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Being the runner up on Work of Art is quite an accomplishment. How do you feel?

A. Peregrine: I feel absolutely great. I adore Adbi and Miles. We all worked very hard. It was like the Olympics. Silver ain't so bad.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Has this experience made you a stronger artist?

A. Peregrine: Being on the show did not make me a stronger artist. It made me a more intelligent person. It's such an experience.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You seemed very emotional when it came to the twin fawns photo. Tell us a little bit about your process for creating it.

A. Peregrine: I have struggled with that piece for so long. It took tears alone to get those fawns. I had to take care of them and fix them. The glass was hand blown and cut in half. My friend did that. It's been maybe seven years, almost eight years, to bring that piece together. Finally, I found a way I wanted it to be printed. The frame alone was almost $1,000. To get that piece in front of New York City in front of a million or two million people, I really had to consider what would be effective and beautiful. To have it be so successful and seen by so many people is very awesome.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Who was your favorite artist to work with on Work of Art, and why?

A. Peregrine: I didn't work with Nicole but I adore Nicole. I worked around her a lot. She was very inspiring to me. Her sense of spirit is phenomenal.



Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What's coming up next for you?

A. Peregrine: I have a solo show coming up with Dwight Hackett Projects. I have a tiny little dog that I continue to puppy train. I have a really wonderful life. I have made some really great friends in this project.

Artist Peregrine Honig Debuts on Reality Show, "Work of Art"

Artist Peregrine Honig Debuts on Reality Show, "Work of Art"

Kansas City based artist, entrepreneur, and curator Peregrine Honig made her debut this week as one of 14 contestants on the Bravo reality show "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist."

by Laura Spencer

Kansas City, MO

Each contestant competes for a $100,000 prize and a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

KCUR's Laura Spencer caught up with Peregrine Honig outside her lingerie shop, birdies, in the Crossroads Arts District.

"Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" viewing party, Wednesdays at 10 pm at the Brick, 1727 McGee, Kansas City, Mo.

Listen to NPR's Morning Edition story about "Work of Art" by clicking on title of post above.